Class "B L 2 A g 
Book JQj 



CROWN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY 



OTTO'S NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Crown Ideological Xibrarp 



WORKS ALREADY PUBLISHED 

Vol. L— BABEL AND BIBLE. By Dr. 

Friedrich Delitzsch. 
Vol. II.— THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF CHRIST. 

An Historical and Critical Essay. By Paul Lobstein. 
Vol. III.— MY STRUGGLE FOR LIGHT. 

Confessions of a Preacher. By R. "Wimmer. 
Vol. IV.— LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. Its 

Origin, Nature, and Mission. By Jean Reville. 
Vol. V— WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? By 

Adolf Harnack. 
Vol. VI.— FAITH AND MORALS. By W. 

Herrmann. 

Vol. VII.— EARLY HEBREW STORY. A 
Study of the Origin, the Value, and the Historical 
Background of the Legends of Israel. By John P. 
Peters, D.D. 

Vol. VIII. — BIBLE PROBLEMS AND THE 
NEW MATERIAL FOR THEIR SOLUTION. By 
Prof. T. K. CHEYNE, D.Litt., D.D. 

Vol. IX.— THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE- 
MENT AND ITS HISTORICAL EVOLUTION, AND 
RELIGION AND MODERN CULTURE. By the late 
AUGUSTE SABATIER 

Vol. X. — THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CON- 
CEPTION OF CHRIST : its Significance and Value 
in the History of Religion. By Otto Pfleiderer. 

Vol. XL— THE CHILD AND RELIGION. 

Eleven Essays by Various Writers. 
Vol. XII.— THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION: 

An Anthropological Study. ByL. R. Farnell, M.A., 

D.Litt. 

Vol. XIIL— THE HISTORY OF EARLY 
CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. The Books of the New 
Testament. By Baron Hermann von Soden, D.D. 

Vol. XIV.— JESUS. By W. Bousset. 

Vol. XV.— THE COMMUNION OF THE 
CHRISTIAN WITH GOD. By W. HERRMANN. Revised 
and much enlarged Edition. 

Vol. XVI. HEBREW RELIGION. To the Es- 
tablishment of Judaism under Ezra. By W. E. 
Addis, M.A. 



NATURALISM AND 
RELIGION 

BY 

Dr. RUDOLF OTTO 

it' 

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GOTTINGEN 
TRANSLATED BY 

J. ARTHUR THOMSON 

PROFESSOR OF NATURAE HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 
AND 

MARGARET R. THOMSON 

EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

Rev. W. D. MORRISON, LL.D. 



NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
LONDON : WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 
1907 



to < 



*1 



PREFACE 



It is a remarkable and in some respects a disquieting 
fact that whilst rival ecclesiastical parties are engaged 
in a furious and embittered debate as to the precise 
shade of religious instruction to be given in public 
elementary schools, the thinking classes in modern 
Europe are becoming more and more stirred by the 
really vital question whether there is room in the 
educated mind for a religious conception of the world at 
all. The slow silent uninterrupted advance of research 
of all kinds into nature, life, and history, has imper- 
ceptibly but irrevocably, revolutionised our traditional 
outlook upon the world, and one of the supreme 
questions before the contemporary mind is the probable 
issue of the great struggle now taking place between 
the religious and the non-religious conception of human 
life and destiny. When we look at the development of 
this great fundamental conflict we feel that disputes 
between rival ecclesiastical systems are of trifling 
moment ; the real task at the present time before every 
form of religion is the task of vindicating itself before a 
hostile view of life and things. 

It is the consciousness of this fact which has led to 
the translation and publication in English of Professor 
Otto's volume. Professor Otto is well known on the 



vi 



PREFACE 



Continent as a thinker who possesses the rare merit of 
combining a high philosophic discipline with an 
accurate and comprehensive knowledge of the science of 
organic nature. It is this combination of aptitudes 
which has attracted so much attention to his work on 
Naturalism and Religion, and which gives it a value 
peculiar to itself. At a time when so much loose and 
incoherent thinking exists about fundamental problems, 
and when so many irrelevant claims are made, some- 
times on behalf of religion and sometimes on behalf of 
hypotheses said to be resting upon science, it is a real 
satisfaction to meet with such a competent guide as Dr. 
Otto. Although his book is written for the general 
reader, it is in reality a solid scientific contribution to 
the great debate at present in progress between two 
different conceptions of the ultimate nature and mean- 
ing of things. As such it is to be hoped that it 
will receive the favourable consideration which it 
deserves at the hands of the English-speaking world. 



W. D. M. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 



The Religious Interpretation of the World . . 1 

What is distinctive in the Religious Outlook . . 6 

CHAPTER II 

Naturalism 17 

What is distinctive in the Naturalistic Outlook . 18 

The true Naturalism 22 

Goethe's Attitude to Naturalism .... 24 

The two kinds of Naturalism 28 

Aim and Method of Naturalism 30 

CHAPTER III 

Fundamental Principles 34 

How the Religious and the Naturalistic Outlooks 

Conflict ........ 36 

Mystery : Dependence : Purpose .... 41 

The Mystery of Existence remains unexplained . 43 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Evolution and New Beginnings 51 

The Dependence of the Order of Nature ... 54 
The " Contingency " of the World . . . .61 

The Real World 65 

The Antinomy of our Conception of Time . . 69 
The Antinomy of the Conditioned and the Uncon- 
ditioned 71 

The Antinomy of Our Conception of Space . . 72 

Intuitions of Reality 74 

The Recognition of Purpose 77 

Teleological and Scientific Interpretations are Alike 

Necessary 82 

CHAPTER IV 

Darwinism in General 85 

The Development of Darwinism .... 86 

Darwinism and Teleology 89 

The Characteristic Features of Darwinism . . 91 

Various Forms of Darwinism 94 

The Theory of Descent . . . . , 97 

Haeckel's Evolutionist Position . . . . .101 
Weismann's Evolutionist Position . . . .103 

Virchow's Position 106 

Other Instances of Dissatisfaction with the Theory 

of Descent . . Ill 

CHAPTER V 

Religion and the Theory of Descent . , .128 
The Problema Continui ...... 134 



CONTENTS ix 
CHAPTER VI 

PAGE 

Darwinism in the Strict Sense . . . . . 139 

Differences of Opinion as to the Factors in Evolution 142 
Weismannism . . . . . . 145 

Natural Selection . . . . . . .154 

CHAPTER VII 

Critics or Darwinism 160 

Lamarck and Neo-Lamarckism 164 

Theory of Definite Yariation . . . . . 170 

De Vries's Mutation Theory 172 

Eimer's Orthogenesis 174 

The Spontaneous Activity of the Organism . . 177 
Contrast between Darwinian and post-Darwinian 

Views . . 182 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Mechanical Theory of Life . . . .187 
The Conservation of Matter and Energy . . .194 

The Organic and the Inorganic 196 

Irritability .201 

Spontaneous Generation ...... 205 

The Mechanics of Development ..... 209 

Heredity .211 

b 



X 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

Criticism of Mechanical Theories .... 220 
The Law of Conservation of Energy . . . 232 
Criticisms of the Mechanistic Theory of Life . . 234 

Yirchow's " Caution " 237 

Preyer's Position 239 

The Position of Bunge and other Physiologists . 242 
The Views of Botanists Illustrated . . . .248 

Constructive Criticism 253 

The Constructive Work of Driesch . . . .261 
The Views of Albrecht and Schneider . . .276 
How all this affects the Religious Outlook . . 274 



CHAPTER X 

Autonomy of Spirit 

Naturalistic Attacks on the Autonomy of the Spiritual 

The Fundamental Answer 

Individual Development 

Underivability 

Pre-eminence of Consciousness 

Creative Power of Consciousness . 

Activity of Consciousness 

The Ego 

Self-Consciousness 

The Unity of Consciousness 

Consciousness of the Ego 



CONTENTS xi 
CHAPTER XI 

PAGE 

Freedom of Spirit 317 

Feeling . . 326 

Individuality • 326 

Genius 329 

Mysticism 329 

Mind and Spirit : The Human and the Animal Soul 330 

Personality 336 

Parallelism 337 

No Parallelism 342 

The Supremacy of Mind 350 

"The Unconscious" 352 

Is there Ageing of the Mind ? 353 

Immortality 356 

CHAPTER XII 

The World and God 360 



CHAPTER I 



THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION OF THE WORLD 

The title of this book, contrasting as it does the 
naturalistic and the religious interpretation of the world, 
indicates that the intention of the following pages is, 
in the first place, to define the relation, or rather the 
antithesis, between the two ; and, secondly, to endeavour 
to reconcile the contradictions, and to vindicate against 
the counter-claims of naturalism, the validity and free- 
dom of the religious outlook. In doing this it is 
assumed that there is some sort of relation between the 
two conceptions, and that there is a possibility of 
harmonising them. 

Will this be admitted ? Is it not possible that the 
two views are incommensurable, and would it not be 
most desirable for both sides if this were so, for if there 
is no logical antithesis then there can be no real an- 
tagonism ? And is not this actually the case ? Surely 
we have now left far behind us the primitive expressions 
of the religious outlook which were concerned with the 
creation of the world in six days, the making of Eve 
out of Adam's rib, the story of Paradise and the 
angelic and demoniacal forces, and the accessory miracles 

A 



2 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



and accompanying signs by means of which the Divine 
control of the world was supposed to manifest itself. 
We have surely learnt by this time to distinguish 
between the simple mythical or legendary forms of ex- 
pression in the religious archives, and their spiritual 
value and ethical content. We can give to natural 
science and to religious feeling what is due to each, 
and thus have done for ever with tedious apologetic 
discussion. 

It were well indeed if we had really attained to this ! 
But the relations, and therefore the possibilities of con- 
flict between religion and world-science, are by no means 
so easily disposed of. No actually existing form of 
religion is so entirely made up of " feeling,'" " subjec- 
tivity ? or " mood," that it can dispense with all assump- 
tions or convictions regarding the nature and import of 
the world. In fact, every form, on closer examination, 
reveals a more or less fixed framework of convictions, 
theoretical assumptions, and presuppositions in regard to 
man, the world, and existence : that is to say, a theory, 
however simple, of the universe. And this theory must 
be harmonised with the conceptions of things as they 
are presented to us in general world-lore, in natural and 
historical science, in particular sciences, in theories of 
knowledge, and perhaps in metaphysics ; it must 
measure itself by and with these, and draw from them 
support and corroboration, and possibly also submit to 
contradiction and correction. 

There is no form of religion, not even the most rare- 



THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 3 



fied (which makes least claim because it has least con- 
tent), that does not include in itself some minute Credo, 
some faith, implying attachment to a set of doctrines 
and conclusions however few. And it is always neces- 
sary to show that these conclusions are worthy of 
adherence, and that they are not at variance with con- 
clusions and truths in regard to nature and the world 
drawn from other sources. And if we consider, not the 
efflorescences and artificial products of religion, but 
religion itself, it is certain that there is, and always 
must be, around it a borderland and fringe of religious 
world-theory, with which it is not indeed identical, but 
without which it is inconceivable ; that is, a series of 
definite and characteristic convictions relating to the 
world and its existence, its meaning, its " whence " and 
" whither " ; to man and his intelligence, his place and 
function in the world, his peculiar dignity, and his 
destiny ; to time and space, to infinity and eternity, and 
to the depth and mystery of Being in general. 

These convictions and their fundamental implications 
can be defined quite clearly, both singly and as a whole, 
and later we shall attempt so to define them. And it 
is of the greatest importance to religion that these pre- 
suppositions and postulates should have their legitimacy 
and validity vindicated. For they are at once the 
fundamental and the minimal postulates which religion 
must make in its outlook on the world, which it must 
make if it is to exist at all. And they are so consti- 
tuted that, even when they are released from their 



4 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



primitive and naive form and association, and permitted 
speculative development and freedom, they must, never- 
theless, just because they contain a theory of the world, 
be brought into comparison, contact, or relation of 
some kind, whether hostile or friendly, with other world- 
conceptions of different origin. This relation will be 
hostile or friendly according to the form these other 
conceptions have taken. It is impossible to imagine 
any religious view of the world whose network of con- 
ceptions can have meshes so wide, or constituents so 
elastic and easily adjustable, that it will allow every 
theoretical conception of nature and the world to pass 
through it without violence or friction, offering to 
none either let or hindrance. 

It has indeed often been affirmed that religion may, 
without anxiety about itself, leave scientific know- 
ledge of the world to go its own way. The secret 
reservation in this position is always the belief that 
scientific knowledge will never in any case reach the 
real depth and meaning of things. Perhaps this is true. 
But the assumption itself would remain, and would 
have to be justified. And if religion had no other 
interest in general world- theory, it would still have this 
pre-eminent one, that, by defining the limitations of 
scientific theory, and showing that they can never be 
transcended, it thus indicates for itself a position beyond 
them in which it can dwell securely. In reality religion has 
never ceased to turn its never-resting, often anxious gaze 
towards the progress, the changes, the secure results 



THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 5 



and tentative theories in the domain of general world - 
science, and again and again it has been forced to come 
to a new adjustment with them. 

One great centre of interest, though by no means the 
only or even the chief one, lies in the special field of 
world-lore and theoretical interpretation comprised in 
the natural sciences. And in the following pages we 
shall make this our special interest, and shall endeavour 
to inquire whether our modern natural science consists 
with the " minimal requirements M of the religious point 
of view, with which we shall make closer acquaintance 
later ; or whether it is at all capable of being brought 
into friendly relations with that point of view. 

Such a study need not necessarily be " apologetic," 
that is to say, defensive, but may be simply an exami- 
nation. For in truth the real results of investigation 
are not now and never were " aggressive," but are in 
themselves neutral towards not only religious but 
all idealistic conceptions, and leave it, so to speak, 
to the higher methods of study to decide how the 
material supplied is to be taken up into their differ- 
ent departments, and brought under their particular 
points of view. Our undertaking only becomes defen- 
sive and critical because, not from caprice or godless- 
ness, but, as we shall see, from an inherent necessity, the 
natural sciences, in association with other convictions 
and aims, tend readily to unite into a distinctive and 
independent system of world-interpretation, which, if it 
were valid and sufficient, would drive the religious view 



6 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



into difficulties, or make it impossible. This independ- 
ent system is Naturalism, and against its attacks the 
religious conception of the world has to stand on the 
defensive. 

What is Distinctive in the Religious Outlook 

At the very beginning and throughout we must keep 
the following points clearly before us, otherwise all our 
endeavours will only lead us astray, and be directed 
towards an altogether false issue. 

Firstly, everything depends and must depend upon 
vindicating the validity and freedom of the religious 
view of the world as contrasted with world-science in 
general ; but we must not attempt to derive it directly 
from the latter. If religion is to live, it must be able 
to demonstrate — and it can be demonstrated — that its 
convictions in regard to the world and human existence 
are not contradicted from any other quarter, that they 
are possible and may be believed to be true. It can, 
perhaps, also be shown that a calm and unprejudiced 
study of nature, both physical and metaphysical reflec- 
tion on things, will supplement the interpretations of 
religion, and will lend confirmation and corroboration 
to many of the articles of faith already assured to it. 
Rut it would be quite erroneous to maintain that we 
must be able to read the religious conception of the 
world out of nature, and thatiit must be, in the first in- 
stance, derivable from nature, or that we can, not to say 



THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 7 

must, regard natural knowledge as the source and basis 
of the religious interpretation of the world. An 
apologetic based on such an idea as this would greatly 
overestimate its own strength, and not only venture too 
high a stake, but would damage the cause of religion 
and alter the whole position of the question. This 
mistake has often been made. The old practice of 
finding " evidences of the existence of God " had exactly 
this tendency. It was seriously believed that one could 
thereby do more than vindicate for religious conviction 
a right of way in the system of knowledge. It was 
seriously believed that knowledge of God could be 
gained from and read out of nature, the world, and 
earthly existence, and thus that the propositions of the 
religious view of the world could not only gain freedom 
and security, but could be fundamentally proved, and 
even directly inferred from Nature in the first instance. 
The strength of these evidences was greatly over- 
estimated, and Nature was too much studied with 
reference to her harmony, her marvellous wealth and 
purposeful wisdom, her significant arrangements and 
endless adaptations ; and too little attention was paid 
to the multitudinous enigmas, to the many instances of 
what seems unmeaning and purposeless, confused and 
dark. People were far too ready to reason from finite 
things to infinite causes, and the validity or logical 
necessity of the inferences drawn was far too rarely 
scrutinised. And, above all, the main point was over- 
looked. For even if these " evidences " had succeeded 



8 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



better, if they had been as sufficient as they were in- 
sufficient, it is certain that religion and the religious 
conception of the world could never have arisen from 
them, but were in existence long before any such con- 
siderations had been taken into account. 

Long before these were studied, religion had arisen 
from quite other sources. These sources lie deep in 
the human spirit, and have had a long history. To 
trace them back in detail is a special task belonging to 
the domain of religious psychology, history, and philo- 
sophy, and we cannot attempt it here, but must take it 
for granted. Having arisen from these sources, religion 
has long lived a life of its own, forming its own con- 
victions in regard to the world and existence, possessing 
these as its faith and truth, basing their credibility, 
and gaining for them the adherence of its followers, on 
quite other grounds than those used in " proving the 
existence of God.'" Ideas and conclusions which have 
not arisen in this way can hardly be said to be religious, 
though they may resemble religious ideas. But hav- 
ing thus arisen, the religious view comes into contact 
with knowledge in general, and then a need for justi- 
fication, or even a state of antagonism, may arise. It 
may then be asked whether convictions and ideas 
which, so far, have come solely from within, and have 
been affirmed and recognised as truths only by heart 
and conscience, can possibly be adhered to in the face 
of the insight afforded by an investigation and scientific 
knowledge of nature. 



THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 9 



Let us take an example, and at once the highest that 
can be found. The religious recognition of the sway of 
an eternal Providence cannot possibly be directly 
derived from, or proved by, any consideration of nature 
and history. If we had not had it already, no apolo- 
getic and no evidences of the existence of God would 
have given it to us. The task of an apologetic which 
knows its limitations and its true aims can only be to 
inquire whether there is scope and freedom left for 
these religious ideas alongside of our natural knowledge 
of the world ; to show that the latter, because of its 
proper limitations, has no power to make a pronounce- 
ment in regard to the highest meaning of the world ; 
and to point to certain indications in nature and history 
that justify us in interpreting the whole in terms of 
purpose and ultimate import. This is the case with all 
the conceptions and conclusions of the religious view of 
the world. No single one of them can be really proved 
from a study of nature, because they are much too deep 
to be reached by ordinary reasoning, and much too 
peculiar in their character and content to be discovered 
by any scientific consideration of nature or interpreta- 
tion of the world. It is, however, at the same time 
obvious that all apologetic must follow religion, and 
can never precede it. Religion can only be awakened, 
never coerced. Once awakened, it can reflect on its 
validity and freedom ; but it alone can really under- 
stand both. And apart from religion, or without its 
presence, all apologetic endeavours are gratuitous, and 



10 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



are, moreover, expressly forbidden by its own highest 
authorities (Matt, xxiii. 15). 

The second point is even more important. Religion 
does not hold its theory of the world and its interpre- 
tations of the nature and meaning of things in the 
same way as poetry does its fine-spun, airy dreams, 
whose chief value lies in the fact that they call up 
moods and arouse a play of feeling, and which may be 
grave or gay, elegiac or idyllic, charming or sublime, 
but may be true or false indifferently. 

For there is this outstanding difference between 
religion and all " moods " — all poetic or fanciful views 
of nature — that it lives by the certainty of its ideas, 
suffers if they be uncertain, and dies if they be shown 
to be untenable, however charming or consoling, sublime 
or simple they may be. Its theories of the world are 
not poems ; they are convictions, and these require to 
be first of all not pleasing but true. (Hence it is that 
criticism may arise out of religion itself, since religion 
seeks for its own sake to find secure foundations.) And 
in this respect the religious conception of the world is 
quite in line with world-theory in general. Both desire 
to express reality. They do not wish to lay gaily- 
coloured wreaths and garlands about reality that they 
may enjoy it, plunged in their respective moods; they 
desire to understand it and give an account of it. 

But there is at once apparent a characteristic differ- 
ence between the propositions and conclusions of the 
religious view and those of the secular, a difference not 



THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 11 

so much of content, which goes without saying, but in 
the whole form, manner and method, and tone. As 
Schleiermacher put it : 44 You can never say that it 
advances with the sure tread " of which science in 
general is capable, and by which it is recognisable. 
The web of religious certainty is much more finely and 
delicately woven, and more susceptible of injury than 
the more robust one of ordinary knowledge. Moreover, 
where religious certainty has attained its highest point 
in a believing mind, and is greater rather than less than 
the certainty of what is apprehended by the senses or 
experienced day by day, this characteristic difference is 
most easily discerned. The believer is probably much 
more confident about 44 the care of his Heavenly Father," 
or 44 the life eternal," than he is about this life with its 
varying and insignificant experiences and content. For 
he knows about the life beyond in quite a different way. 
The truths of the religious outlook cannot be put on 
the same level as those of ordinary and everyday life. 
And when the mind passes from one to the other it does 
so with the consciousness that the difference is in kind. 
The knowledge of God and eternity, and the real value, 
transcending space and time, of our own inner being, 
cannot even in form be mixed up with the trivial truths 
of the normal human understanding or the conclusions 
of science. In fact, the truths of religion exhibit, in 
quite a special way, the character of all ideal truths, 
which are not really true for every day at all, but are 
altogether bound up with exalted states of feeling. This 



12 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



is expressed in the old phrase, "Deus non scitur sed 
creditur " [God is not known but believed in]. For the 
Sorbonne was quite right and protected one of the 
essential interests of religion, when it rejected as heresy 
the contrary position, that it was possible to " know " 
God. Thus, in the way in which I " know " that I am 
sitting at this writing-table, or that it rained yesterday, 
or that the sum of the angles in a triangle are equal to 
two right angles, I can know nothing of God. But I 
can know of Him something in the way in which I know 
that to tell the truth is right, that to keep faith is 
duty, propositions which are certain and which state 
something real and valid, but which I could not have 
arrived at without conscious consent, and a certain 
exaltation of spirit on my own part. This, and espe- 
cially the second part of it, holds true in an increased 
degree of all religious conceptions. They weave them- 
selves together out of the most inward and subtle 
experiences, out of impressions which are coarsened in 
the very act of expressing them. Their import and 
value must be judged entirely by the standards of 
conscience and feeling, by their own self-sufficiency and 
validity. The best part of them lies in the intensity 
and vitality of their experience, and in the spontaneous 
acceptance and recognition which they receive. They 
cannot be apprehended by the prosaic, secular mind ; 
whatever is thus apprehended is at most an indifferent 
analogue of religious experience, if it is not self- 
deception. 



THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 13 



It is only in exaltation, in quiet enthusiasm, that 
religious feelings can come to life and become pervasive, 
and religious truth can only become a possession avail- 
able for everyday use in proportion as it is possible to 
make this non-secular and exalted state of mind perma- 
nent, and to maintain enthusiasm as the enduring mood 
of life and conduct. And as this is capable of all 
degrees of intensity from overpowering outbursts and 
isolated raptures to a gentle but permanent tension and 
elevation of spirit, so also is the certainty and actuality 
of our knowledge, whether of the sway of the divine 
power, or of our own higher nature and destiny, or of 
any religious truth whatever. This is what is meant 
by St. Paul's " Praying without ceasing " and his 
" Being in the Spirit " as a permanent mood ; and herein 
lies the justification of the statement of enthusiasm that 
truth is only found in moments of ecstasy. In fact, 
religion and religious interpretations are nothing if not 
' 6 enthusiasms," that is to say, expressions of the art of 
sustaining a permanent exaltation of spirit. And any 
one who is not capable of this inward exaltation, or is 
too little capable of it, is badly qualified for either 
religion or religious outlook. The " enthusiasts " will 
undoubtedly make a better figure in the " kingdom of 
God," as well as find an easier entrance therein, than 
the prosaic matter-of-fact people. 

This is really the source of much that is vexatious in 
all apologetic efforts, and indeed in all theorising about 
religion, as soon as we attempt to get beyond the 



14 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



periphery into the heart of the matter. For in order 
to understand the subject at all a certain amount of 
" enthusiasm " is necessary, and in most cases the dis- 
putants fail to reach common ground because this 
enthusiasm is lacking in one or both. If they both have 
it, in that case also dialectics are out of the question. 

Finally, it must be remarked that, as Luther puts it, 
" Faith always goes against appearances." The religious 
conception of the world not only never grows directly 
out of a scientific and general study of things, but it 
can never be brought into absolute congruence with 
it. There are endless tracts and domains of the 
world, in nature and history, which we cannot 
bring under the religious consideration at all, because 
they admit of no interpretation from the higher or 
more general points of view ; they lie before us as 
everlasting unrelated mysteries, uncomprehended as to 
their import and purpose. Moreover, the religious 
theory of the world can never tell us, or wish to tell us, 
what the world is as a whole, or what is the meaning of 
its being. It is enough for us that it throws light on 
our own being, and reveals to us our place and destiny, 
and the meaning of our existence. It is enough if, in 
this respect, reality adapts itself to the interpretations 
of religion, admits of their truth and allows them scope, 
and corroborates them in important ways and instances. 
It actually does this, and it can be demonstrated that 
it does. And in demonstrating this the task of an 
apologetic that knows its own limitations alone consists. 



THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 15 



It must be aware that it will succeed even in this, only 
if it is supported by a courageous will to believe and joy 
in believing, that many gaps and a thousand riddles will 
remain, that the ultimate and highest condition of the 
search after a world-interpretation is personal decision 
and personal choice, which finally depends upon * what 
manner of man one is/ Faith has always meant going 
against appearances. It has gone against them not 
from obstinacy or incorrigible lack of understanding, 
but because it has had strong reasons, impossible to set 
aside, for regarding appearances literally as appearances. 
It has suffered from the apparent, often even to the 
point of extinction, and has again drawn from it and 
from its opposition its highest strength. That they 
overmastered appearances made of the heroes of faith 
the greatest of all heroes. And thus religion lives by 
the very riddles which have frequently caused its death, 
and they are a part of its inheritance and constitution. 
To work continually towards their solution is a task 
which it will never give up. Until success has been 
achieved, it is of importance to show, that what comes 
into conflict with faith in these riddles at the present 
day is not something new and previously unheard of. 
In cases where faith has died because of them we almost 
invariably find the opinion that religion might have been 
possible in earlier and more naive times, but that it is no 
longer possible to us, with our deeper insight into the 
dark mystery of nature and destiny. This is foolishness. 
When faith dies thus, it dies of one of its infantile 



16 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



diseases. For from the tragedies of Job and of Jeremiah 
to the Tower of Siloam and the horror of the Mont- 
Pelee eruption there runs a direct lineage of the same 
perennial riddle. Well-developed religion has never 
existed without this — at once its shadow and its touch- 
stone. 



CHAPTER II 

NATURALISM 

Naturalism is not of to-day or of yesterday, but is very 
ancient, — as old, indeed, as philosophy, — as old as human 
thought and doubt. Indeed, we may say that it almost 
invariably played its part whenever man began to reflect 
on the whence and the how of the actual world around 
him. In the philosophical systems of Leucippus and 
Democritus and Epicurus it lies fully developed before us. 
It persisted as a latent and silently dreaded antagonist, 
even in times when " orthodox " anti-naturalistic and 
super-naturalistic systems were the officially prevailing 
ones, and were to all appearance generally adhered to. 
So in the more modern systems of materialism and 
positivism, in the Systeme de la nature and in the theory 
of Thomme machine, in the materialistic reactions from 
the idealistic nature-speculations of Schelling and Hegel, 
in the discussions of materialism in the past century, in 
the naturalistic writings of Moleschott, Czolbe, Vogt, 
Biichner, and Haeckel, and in the still dominant natu- 
ralistic tendency and mood which acquired new form 
and deep-rooted individuality through Darwinism, — 
in all these we find naturalism, not indeed originating 



18 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



as something new, but simply blossoming afresh with 
increased strength. The antiquity of Naturalism is no 
reproach, and no reason for regarding it as a matter long 
since settled ; it rather indicates that Naturalism is not a 
chance phenomenon, but an inevitable growth. The fa- 
vourite method of treating it as though it were the out- 
come of modern scepticism, malice, or obduracy, is just as 
absurd as if the " naturalists " were to treat the convic- 
tions of their opponents as the result of incredible narrow- 
mindedness, priestly deception, senility, or calcification 
of the brain-cells. And as naturalism is of ancient 
origin so also do its different historical phases and forms 
resemble each other in their methods, aims, and argu- 
ments, as well as in the moods, sympathies, and anti- 
pathies which accompany them. Even in its most 
highly developed form we can see that it did not spring 
originally from a completed and unified principle, but 
was primarily criticism of and opposition to other views. 

What is Distinctive in the Naturalistic Outlook. 

At first tentative, but becoming ever more distinctly 
conscious of its real motive, Naturalism has always 
arisen in opposition to what we may call " super- 
natural " propositions, whether these be the naive 
mythological explanations of world-phenomena found 
in primitive religions, or the supernatural popular 
metaphysics which usually accompanies the higher 
forms. It is actuated at the same time by one of the 



THE NATURALISTIC OUTLOOK 19 



most admirable impulses in human nature, — the impulse 
to explain and understand, — and to explain, if possible, 
through simple, familiar, and ordinary causes. The 
sane human understanding sees all about it the domain 
of everyday and familiar phenomena. It is quite at 
home in this domain ; everything seems to it well- 
known, clear, transparent, and easily understood ; it 
finds in it intelligible causes and certain laws which 
govern phenomena, as well as a constant association of 
cause and effect. Here everything can be individually 
controlled and examined, and everything " happens 
naturally." Things govern themselves. Nothing un- 
expected, nothing that has not its obvious causes, 
nothing mysterious or miraculous happens here. Sharply 
contrasted with this stands the region of the apparently 
inexplicable, the supernatural, with all its influences 
and operations, and results. To the religious inter- 
pretation in its naive, pious, or superstitious forms 
of expression, this region of the supernatural seems to 
encroach broadly and deeply on the domain of the 
everyday world. But with the awakening of criticism 
and reflection, and the deepening of investigation into 
things, it retreats farther and farther, it surrenders piece 
after piece to the other realm of thought, and this 
arises doubt and suspicion. With these there soon 
awakens a profound conviction that a similar mode of 
causal connection binds all things together, a glimmer- 
ing of the uniformity and necessity embracing, compre- 
hending, and ultimately explaining all things. And these 



20 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



presentiments, in themselves at first quite childishly and 
almost mythologically conceived, may still be, even 
when they first arise, and while they are still only 
vaguely formulated, anticipations of later more definite 
scientific conceptions. Such a beginning of naturalistic 
consciousness may remain quite naive and go no farther 
than a silent but persistent protest. It makes free use 
of such familiar expressions as " everything comes about 
of itself"; "everything happens by natural means"; 
"it is all 'nature' or 'evolution. 1 " But from the 
primitive naturalistic outlook there may arise recon- 
structions of nature and cosmic speculations on a large 
scale, expanding into naturalistic systems of the most 
manifold kinds, beginning with those of the Ionic 
philosophers and coming down to those of the most 
recent times. Their watchwords remain the same, 
though in an altered dialect : " nature and natural 
phenomena," the denial of " dualism," the upholding of 
the one principle " monism," the all-sufficiency of nature, 
and the absence of any intervening influences from 
without or beyond nature. Rapidly and of necessity 
this last item becomes transformed into a " denial of 
teleology " : nature knows neither will nor purpose, it 
has only to do with conditions and results. With these 
it deals and through them it works. Even in the most 
elementary naturalistic idea, that " everything happens 
of itself," there lurks that aversion to purpose which 
characterises all naturalistic systems. 

A naturalism which has arisen and grown in this 



THE NATURALISTIC OUTLOOK 



21 



manner has in itself nothing to do with concrete and exact 
knowledge of nature. It may comprise a large number 
of ideas which are sharply opposed to " science," and 
which may be in themselves mythological, or poetical, 
or even mystical. For what " nature " itself really is 
fundamentally, how it moves, unfolds, or impels, how 
things actually happen " naturally," this naturalism has 
never attempted to think out. Indeed, naturalism of 
this type, though it opposes " dualism," does not by any 
means usually intend to set itself against religion. On 
the contrary, in its later developments, it may take it up 
into itself in the form of an apotheosis and a worship of 
nature. Almost invariably naturalism which begins 
thus develops, not into atheism, but into pantheism. 
It is true that all is nature and happens naturally. But 
nature itself, as Thales said, is " full of gods," instinct 
with divine life. It is the all-living which, unwearied 
and inexhaustible, brings forth form after form and 
pours out its fulness. It is Giordano Bruno's " Cause, 
Principle, and Unity," in endless beauty and over- 
powering magnificence, and it is Goethe's " Great 
Goddess," herself the object of the utmost admiration, 
reverence, and devotion. This mood may readily pass 
over into a kind of worship of God and belief in 
Him, " God " being regarded as the soul and mind, the 
" Logos " of Heraclitus and the Stoics, the inner 
meaning and reason of this all-living nature. And 
thus naturalism in its last stages may sometimes be 
quite devout, and may assure us that it is compelled 



22 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



to deny only the transcendental and not the imma- 
nent God, the Divine being enthroned above the 
world, but not the living God dwelling within it. 
And ever anew Goethe's verse is quoted : 

What God would outwardly alone control, 
And on His finger whirl the mighty Whole ? 
He loves the inner world to move, to view 
Nature in Him, Himself in nature too, 
So that what in Him works, and is, and lives, 
The measure of His strength, His spirit gives. 

The True Naturalism 

But naturalism becomes fundamentally different when 
it ceases to remain at the level of naive or fancifully 
conceived ideas of " nature " and " natural occurrences," 
when, instead of poetry or religious sentiments, it 
incorporates something else, namely, exact natural 
science and the idea of a mathematical-mechanical 
calculability in the whole system of nature. " Nature" 
and 4 4 happening naturally as used by the naive 
intelligence, are half animistic ideas and modes of 
expression, which import into nature, or leave in it, life 
and soul, impulse, and a kind of will. And that specu- 
lative form of naturalism which tends to become 
religious develops this fault to its utmost. But a 
6i nature " like this is not at all a possible subject for 
natural science and exact methods, not a subject for 
experiment, calculation, and fixed laws, for precise 
interpretation, or for interpretation on simple rational 



THE TRUE NATURALISM 



principles. Instead of the naive, poetical, and half 
mystical conceptions of nature we must have a really 
scientific one, so that, so to speak, the supernatural may 
be eliminated from nature, and the apparently irrational 
rationalised ; that is, so that all its phenomena may be 
traced back to simple, unequivocal, and easily under- 
stood processes, the actual why and how of all things 
perceived, and thus, it may be, understood ; so that, in 
short, everything may be seen to come about ' 6 by 
natural means." 

There is obviously one domain and order of processes 
in nature which exactly fulfils those requirements, and 
is really in the fullest sense " natural," that is, quite 
easily understood, quite rational, quite amenable to 
computation and measurement, quite rigidly subordinate 
to laws which can be formulated. These are the pro- 
cesses of physics and chemistry, and in a still higher 
degree those of movement in general, the processes of 
mechanics in short. And to bring into this domain 
and subordinate to its laws everything that occurs in 
nature, all becoming, and passing away, and changing, 
all development, growth, nutrition, reproduction, the 
origin of the individual and of the species, of animals 
and of man, of the living and the not living, even of 
sensation and perception, impulse, desire and instinct, 
will and thought — this alone would really be to show 
that things "happen naturally," that is, to explain 
everything in terms of natural causes. And the convic- 
tion that this can be done is the only true naturalism. 



24 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Naturalism of this type is fundamentally different in 
mood and character from the naive and poetic form, 
and is, indeed, in sharp contrast to it. It is working 
against the very motives which are most vital to the 
latter — namely, reverence for and deification of nature. 
Where the two types of naturalism really understand 
themselves nothing but sharp antagonism can exist 
between them. Those on the one side must condemn 
this unfeeling and irreverent, cold and mathematical 
dissection and analysis of the " Great Goddess " as a 
sacrilege and outrage. And those on the other side 
must utterly reject as romantic the view which is 
summed up in the confession : " 1st nicht Kern der 
Natur Menschen im Herzen ? " [Is not the secret of 
nature in the human heart ?] 



Goethe's Attitude to Naturalism 

The most instructive example we can take is Goethe : 
his veneration for nature on the one hand, and on the 
other his pronounced opposition to the naturalism both 
of the materialists and of the mathematicians. Modern 
naturalists are fond of seeking repose and mental 
refreshment in Goethe's conception of the world, under 
the impression that it fits in best and most closely with 
their own views. That they do this says much for 
their mood and taste, but not quite so much for their 
powers of discrimination or for their consistency. It 
is even more thoughtless than when the empiricists 



GOETHE'S ATTITUDE TO NATURALISM 25 

and sensationalists acclaim as their hero, Spinoza, 
the strict, pure rationalist, the despiser of empiricism 
and of knowledge acquired through the senses. For to 
Goethe nature is far from being a piece of mechanism 
which can be calculated on and summed up in mathe- 
matical formulae, an everlasting " perpetuum mobile," a 
magnificent all-powerful machine. In fact, all this and 
especially the word " machine " expresses exactly what 
Goethe's conception was most directly opposed to. 
To him nature is truly the " Goddess," the great Diana 
of the Ephesians, the everlasting Beauty, the artist of 
genius, ceaselessly inventing and creating, in floods of 
Life, in Action's storm — an infinite ocean, a restless 
weaving, a glowing Life. Embracing within herself 
the highest and the humblest, she is in all things, 
throughout all change and transformation, the same, 
shadowing forth the most perfect in the simplest, and 
in the highest only unfolding what she had already 
shown in the lowliest. Therefore Goethe hated all 
divisions and rubrics, all the contrasts and boundaries 
which learned analysis attempts to introduce into 
nature. Passionately he seized on Herder's idea of 
evolution, and it was towards establishing it that all 
his endeavours, botanical, zoological, morphological and 
osteological, were directed. He discovered in the 
human skull the prem axillary bone which occurs in the 
upper jaw of all mammals, and this c< keystone to man " 
gave him, as he himself said, "such joy that all his 
bowels moved." He interpreted the skull as developed 



26 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

from three modified vertebrae. He sketched a hypothesis 
of the primitive plant, and the theory that all the organs 
of the plant are modifications and developments of the 
leaf. He was a friend of Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 
who defended " Funite de composition organique " in the 
forms of nature, and evolution by gradual stages, and 
he was the vehement opponent of Cuvier, who attempted 
to pick the world to pieces according to strictly defined 
architectural plans and rigid classes. And what the 
inner impulse to all this was he has summed up in the 
motto to his " Morphology " from the verse in Job : 

Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not : 
He is transformed, but I perceive him not. 

He further declares it in the introductory verse to his 
Osteology : 

Joyfully some years ago, 

Zealously my spirit sought 
To explore it all, and know 

How all nature lived and wrought : 
And 'tis ever One in all, 

Though in many ways made known ; 
Small in great, and great in small, 

Bach in manner of its own. 
Ever shifting, yet fast holding ; 

Near and far, and far and near ; 
So, with moulding and remoulding, — 

To my wonder I am here. 

In all this there is absolutely nothing of the charac- 
teristic mood and spirit of " exact " naturalism, with its 
mechanical and mathematical categories. It matters 
little that Goethe, when he thought of evolution, never 



GOETHE'S ATTITUDE TO NATURALISM 27 

had present to his mind the idea of Descent which is 
characteristic of " Darwinism," but rather development 
in the lofty sense in which it is worked out in th 
nature-philosophy of Schelling and of Hegel. The chief 
point is, that to him nature was the all-living and ever- 
living, whose creating and governing cannot be reduced 
to prosaic numbers or mathematical formulae, but are 
to be apprehended as a whole by the perceptions of 
genius rather than worked out by calculation or in 
detail. Any other way of regarding nature Goethe 
early and decisively rejected. And he has embodied 
his strong protest against it in his " Dichtung und 
Wahrheit " : 

" How hollow and empty it seemed to us in this 
melancholy, atheistical twilight. . . . Matter, we learnt, 
has moved from all eternity, and by means of this 
movement to right and left and in all directions, it has 
been able, unaided, to call forth all the infinite pheno- 
mena of existence. 

The book — the " Systeme de la Nature " — 44 seemed to 
us so grey, so Cimmerian, so deathlike that it was with 
difficulty we could endure its presence." 

And in a work with remarkable title and contents, 
44 Die Farbenlehre," Goethe has summed up his an- 
tagonism to the 44 Mathematicians," and to their chief, 
Newton, the discoverer and founder of the new mathe- 
matical-mechanical view of nature. Yet the mode of 
looking at things which is here combated with so much 
labour, wit, and, in part, injustice, is precisely that of 



28 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



those who, to this day, swear by the name of Goethe 
with so much enthusiasm and so little intelligence. 

The two Kinds of Naturalism 

But let us return to the two kinds of naturalism we 
have already described. Much as they differ from one 
another in reality, they are very readily confused and 
mixed up with one another. And the chief peculiarity 
of what masquerades as naturalism among our educated 
or half-educated classes to-day lies in the fact that it 
is a mingling of the two kinds. Unwittingly, people 
combine the moods of the one with the reasons and 
methods of the other ; and having done so they appear 
to themselves particularly consistent and harmonious 
in their thought, and are happy that they have been 
able thus to satisfy at once the needs of the intellect 
and those of the heart. 

On the one hand they stretch the mathematical- 
mechanical view as far as possible from below upwards, 
and even attempt to explain the activities of life and 
consciousness as the results of complex reflex mechanisms. 
And on the other hand they bring down will, soul and 
instincts into the lowest stages of existence, and become 
quite animistic. They wish to be nothing if not 
" exact," and yet they reckon Goethe and Bruno 
among the greatest apostles of their faith, and set 
their verses and sayings as a credo and motto over 
their own opinions. In this way there arises a " world 



THE TWO KINDS OF NATURALISM 29 



conception " so indiarubber-like and Protean that it is 
as difficult as it is unsatisfactory to attempt to come 
to an understanding with it. If we attempt to get 
hold of it by the fringe of poetry and idealism it has 
assumed, it promptly retires into its "exact" half. 
And if we try to limit ourselves to this, in order to find 
a basis for discussion, it spreads out before us all the 
splendours of a great nature pantheism, including even 
the ideas of the good, the true, and the beautiful. One 
thing only it neglects, and that is, to show where its 
two very different halves meet, and what inner bond 
unites them. Thus if we are to discuss it at all, we 
must first of all pick out and arrange all the foreign 
and mutually contradictory constituents it has incor- 
porated, then deal with Pantheism and Animism, and 
with the problem of the possibility of " the true, the 
good, the beautiful " on the naturalistic-empiric basis, 
and finally there would remain a readily-grasped residue 
of naturalism of the second form, to come to some under- 
standing with which is both necessary and instructive. 

In the following pages we shall confine ourselves 
entirely to this type, and we shall not laboriously 
disentangle it from the bewildering medley of ideas 
foreign to it, or attempt to make it consistent ; we 
shall neglect these, and have regard solely to its clear 
fundamental principles and aims. Thus regarded, its 
horizons are perfectly well-defined. It is startling in 
its absolute poverty of ideal content, warmth, and 
charm, but impressive and grand in the perseverance 



30 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



and tenacity with which it adheres to one main point 
of view throughout. In reality, it is aggressive to 
nothing, but cold and indifferent to everything, and 
for this very reason is more dangerous than all the 
excited protests and verdicts of the enthusiastic type of 
naturalism, which it is impossible to attack, because of 
its lack of definite principles, and which, in the pathetic 
stress it lays on worshipping nature, lives only by 
what it has previously borrowed from the religious 
conceptions of the world. 

Aim and Method of Naturalism 

The aim and method of the strict type of naturalism 
may be easily defined. In its details it will become more 
distinct as we proceed with our analysis. Taking it as a 
whole, we may say that it is an endeavour on a large scale 
after consistent simplification and gradual reduction 
to lower and lower terms. Since it aims at explaining 
and understanding everything according to the axiom 
principia non temere esse multiplicanda [principles are 
not to be heedlessly multiplied], explaining, that is, 
with the fewest, simplest, and most obvious principles 
possible, it is incumbent upon it to attempt to refer 
all phenomena to a single, uniform mode of occur- 
rence, which admits of nothing outside of or beyond 
itself, and which regulates itself according to its own 
system of fundamentally similar causal sequences. It is 
further incumbent upon it to trace back this universal 



AIM AND METHOD OF NATURALISM SI 

mode of occurrence to the simplest and clearest form 
possible, and its uniformities to the fewest and most 
intelligible laws, that is, ultimately, to laws which can 
be determined by calculation and summed up in formulae. 
This tracing back is equivalent to an elimination of all 
incommensurable causes, of all " final causes," that is, 
of ultimate causes and "purposes" which, in an un- 
accountable manner, work into the network of proxi- 
mate causes and control them, and by thus interrupting 
their connectedness, make it difficult to come to a clear 
understanding of the " Why ? " of things. And this 
elimination is again a "reduction to simpler terms, ,, 
for it replaces the " teleological " consideration of 
purposes, by a purely scientific consideration of causes, 
which inquires only into the actual conditions ante- 
cedent to certain sequences. 

But Being and Becoming include two great realms : 
that of " Nature " and that of" Mind," i.e. consciousness 
and the processes of consciousness. And two apparently 
fundamentally different branches of knowledge relate to 
these : the natural sciences, and the mental sciences. 
If a unified and " natural " explanation is really pos- 
sible, the beginning and end of all this " reducing to 
simpler terms " must be to bridge over the gulf between 
these ; but this, in the sense of naturalism, necessarily 
means that the mental sciences must in some way be 
reduced to terms of natural science, and that the 
phenomena, processes, sequences, and laws of conscious- 
ness must likewise be made " commensurable " with and 



32 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



be linked on to the apparently simpler and clearer know.- 
ledge of " Nature," and, if possible, be subordinated to 
its phenomena and laws, if not indeed derived from 
them. As it is impossible to regard consciousness 
itself as corporeal, or as a process of movement, 
naturalism must at least attempt to show that the 
phenomena of consciousness are attendant and conse- 
quent on corporeal phenomena, and that, though they 
themselves never become corporeal, they are strictly 
regulated by the laws of the corporeal and physical, and 
can be calculated upon and studied in the same way. 

But even the domain of the natural itself, as we know 
it, is by no means simple and capable of a unified 
interpretation. Nature, especially in the realm of 
organic life, the animal and plant world, appears to be 
filled with marvels of purposefulness, with riddles of 
development and differentiation, in short with all the 
mysteries of life. Here most of all it is necessary to 
" reduce " the " teleological view" to terms of the 
purely causal, and to prove that all the results, even 
the evolution of the forms of life, up to their highest 
expressions and in the minutest details of their marvel- 
lous adaptations, came " of themselves," that is to say, 
are quite intelligible as the results of clearly traceable 
causes. It is necessary to reduce the physiological and 
developmental, and all the other processes of life, to terms 
of physical and chemical processes, and thus to reduce 
the living to the not living, and to derive the organic 
from the forces and substances of inanimate nature. 



AIM AND METHOD OF NATURALISM 35 



The process of reduction does not stop even here. 
For physical and chemical processes are only really 
understood when they can be resolved into the sim- 
plest processes of movement in general, when all 
qualitative changes can be traced back to purely quan- 
titative phenomena, when, finally, in the mechanics of 
the great masses, as well as of the infinitely small 
atoms, everything becomes capable of expression in 
mathematical terms. 

But naturalism of this kind is by no means pure 
natural science ; it consciously and deliberately over- 
steps in speculation the bounds of what is strictly 
scientific. In this respect it bears some resemblance to 
the nature-philosophy associated with what we called 
the first type of naturalism. But its very poverty 
enables it to have a strictly defined programme. It 
knows exactly what it wants, and thus it is possible to 
argue with it. The religious conception of the world 
must come to an understanding with it, for it is quite 
obvious that the more indifferent this naturalism is to 
everything outside of itself, and the less aggressive it 
pretends to be, the more does the picture of the world 
which it attempts to draw exert a cramping influence 
on religion. Where the two come into contact we shall 
endeavour to make clear in the following pages. 



c 



CHAPTER III 

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

The fundamental convictions of naturalism, its general 
tendencies, and the points of view which determine its 
outlook, are primarily related to that order of facts 
which forms the subject of the natural sciences, to 
" Nature." It is only secondarily that it attempts to 
penetrate with the methods of the natural sciences 
into the region of the conscious, of the mind, into the 
domain that underlies the mental sciences, including 
history and the aesthetic, political, and religious sciences, 
and to show that, in this region as in the other, natural 
law and the same principles of interpretation obtain, 
that here, too, the " materialistic conception of history 
holds true, and that there is no autonomy of mind." 

The interests of religion here go hand in hand with 
those of the mental sciences, in so far as these claim to be 
distinct and independent. For the question is altogether 
one of the reality, pre-eminence, and independence of 
the spiritual as opposed to the " natural." Occa- 
sionally it has been thought that the whole problem of 
the relations between religion and naturalism was con- 
centrated on this point, and the study of nature has 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 35 



been left to naturalism as if it were indifferent or even 
hopeless, thus leaving a free field for theories of all 
kinds, the materialistic included. It is only in regard 
to the Darwinian theory of evolution and the mechanical 
theory of the origin and nature of life, and parti- 
cularly in regard to the relatively unimportant question 
of " spontaneous generation " that a livelier interest 
is usually awakened. But these isolated theories are 
only a part of the " reduction," which is characteristic 
of naturalism, and they can only be rightly estimated 
and understood in connection with it. We shall turn 
our attention to them only after we have carefully con- 
sidered what is fundamental and essential. But the 
idea that religion may calmly neglect the study of 
nature as long as naturalism leaves breathing-room for 
the freedom and independence of mind is quite erro- 
neous. If religion is true, nature must be of God, and 
it must bear tokens which allow us to interpret it as of 
God. And such signs are to be found. What we shall 
have to say in regard to them may be summed up in the 
following propositions : — 

1. Even the world, which has been brought under 
the reign of scientific laws, is a mystery ; it has been 
formulated, but not explained. 

%. The world governed by law is still dependent, con- 
ditioned, and " contingent." 

3. The conception of Nature as obedient to law is 
not excluded but rather demanded by belief in God. 

4, 5. We cannot comprehend the true nature and 



36 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



depth of things, and the world which we do compre- 
hend is not the true Reality of things ; it is only its 
appearance. In feeling and intuition this appearance 
points beyond itself to the true nature of things. 

6. Ideas and purposes, and with them Providence 
and the control of things, can neither be established by 
the natural sciences nor disputed by them. 

7. The causal interpretation demanded by natural 
science fits in with an explanation according to pur- 
pose, and the latter presupposes the former. 

How the Religious and the Naturalistic 
Outlooks Conflict 

Religion comes into contact with naturalism and de- 
mands to be reconciled with it, not merely at its peri- 
phery, but at its very core, namely, with its characteristic 
ideal of a mathematical-mechanical interpretation of the 
whole world. This ideal seems to be most nearly, if not 
indeed completely, attained in reference to the inter-re- 
lations of the great masses, in the realm of astronomy, 
with the calculable, inviolable, and entirely compre- 
hensible conditions which govern the purely mechani- 
cal correlations of the heavenly bodies. To bring the 
same clearness and intelligibility, the same inevitable- 
ness and calculability into the world in general, and 
into the whole realm of nature down to the mysterious 
law determining the development of the daintiest in- 
sect's wing, and the stirrings of the grey matter in the 



RELIGIOUS & NATURALISTIC OUTLOOKS 37 



cortex of the brain which reveal themselves to us as 
sensation, desire, and thought, this has always been the 
aim and secret faith of the naturalistic mode of thought. 
It is thus aiming at a Cosmos of all Being and Becom- 
ing, which can be explained from itself, and compre- 
hended in itself alone, supported by its own complete 
and all-sufficing causality and uniformity, resting in 
itself, shut up within itself, complete in itself — a God 
sufficient unto himself and resting in himself. 

We do not need to probe very deeply to find out 
how strongly religion resists this attempt, and we easily 
discover what is the disturbing element which awakens 
hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends on 
three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, 
which are closely associated with one another, yet dis- 
tinct from one another, though it is not always easy to 
represent them in their true proportions and relative 
values. The first of these interests seems to be 
" teleology," the search after guiding ideas and purposes, 
after plan and directive control in the whole machinery, 
that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere inquiry 
into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by 
knowing how everything came about or must have 
come about ; all interest lies in the fact that every- 
thing has come about in such a way that it reveals inten- 
tion, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realis- 
ing itself in details and in the whole. This has always 
been rightly regarded as the true concern and interest 
of every religious conception of the world. But it has 



38 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the 
only, or even the primary interest that religion has in 
world-lore. We call it its highest and ultimate interest, 
but we find, on careful study, that two others are asso- 
ciated with and precede it. 

For before all belief in Providence and in the divine 
meaning of the world, indeed before faith at all, 
religion is primarily feeling — a deep, humble conscious- 
ness of the entire dependence and conditionality of 
our existence, and of all things. The belief we have 
spoken of is, in relation to this feeling, merely a 
form — as yet not in itself religious. It is not only the 
question " Have the world and existence a meaning, and 
are phenomena governed by ideas and purposes ? " that 
brings religion and its antagonists into contact ; there is 
a prior and deeper question. Is there scope for this 
true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend 
itself and all the world in humility in the light of that 
which is not of the world, but is above world and 
existence? But this is seriously affected by that 
doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as self- 
governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and fail- 
ing in nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the 
descent from a Simian stock that primarily troubles the 
religious spirit. It is more specially sensitive to the 
strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown 
even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical- 
mechanical system of the great heavenly bodies, in this 
clock of the universe which, in obedience to clear and 



RELIGIOUS & NATURALISTIC OUTLOOKS 39 



inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from ever- 
lasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no 
pedestal, without any stoppage and without room for 
dependence on anything outside of itself, apparently 
entirely godless, but absolutely reason and God enough 
for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that 
the same autonomy and self-regulation may be brought 
down from the stage of immensity into the play of 
everyday life and events. 

But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleier- 
macher has directed our attention anew to the fact 
that the most profound element in religion is that deep- 
lying consciousness of all creatures, " I that am dust and 
ashes," that humble feeling of the absolute dependence 
of every being in the world on One that is above all the 
world. But religion does not fully express itself even 
in this ; there is yet another note that sounds still 
deeper and is the keynote of the triad. "Let a man 
examine himself." Is it not the case that we ourselves, 
in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm 
for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every 
new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science 
succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy 
with the impulse to understand everything and bring 
reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty 
adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investi- 
gations of natural science ? Yet on the other hand, in 
as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a 
sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness 



40 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to 
have everything intelligible, clear, rational and trans- 
parent? This feeling which stirs in us has always 
existed in all religious minds and will only die with 
them. And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. 
For this is the most real characteristic of religion ; it 
seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is con- 
cealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more 
than humility ; it is piety. And piety is experience 
of mystery. 

It is at this point that religion comes most violently 
into antagonism with the meaning and mood of 
naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And 
it is here above all that scientific investigation and its 
materialistic complement seem to take away freedom 
and truth, air and light from religion. For science is 
seeking especially this : Deeper penetration into and 
illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope 
and microscope into its most outlying regions and 
most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It 
explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this 
side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with 
the notice " No Room " of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. 
It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulae, 
if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, 
defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes 
of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to 
those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, 
and which not only crowds " heaven " out of the world, 



MYSTERY— DEPENDENCE— PURPOSE 41 



but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious 
and incommensurable which seemed to surround them. 

Mystery: Dependence: Purpose. 

There is then a threefold religious interest, and there 
are three corresponding points of contact between the 
religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, 
where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic 
to one another. Arranging them in their proper order 
we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of 
experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence 
to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and 
manifested in things merely as the thin crust which 
separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. 
Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to 
bring ourselves and all creatures into the " feeling of 
absolute dependence," and, as the belief in creation 
does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal 
Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. 
Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpre- 
tation of the world as opposed to the purely causal 
interpretation of natural science ; that is to say, an 
interpretation of the world according to eternal God- 
willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In 
all three respects, it is important to religion that it 
should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as 
contrasted with naturalism. 

But while religion must inquire of itself into the 



42 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, 
there are two possibilities which may serve to make 
peace between it and natural science. It may, for 
instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical 
interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within 
its own domain, does not take away from nature the 
characters which religion seeks and requires in it, 
namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may 
be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this 
ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may 
be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it 
is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as 
a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature 
as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without 
straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests 
another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method 
of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the 
whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain 
aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly 
interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by 
the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously 
out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth 
which is not to be explained away. 

All these possibilities occur. And though they need 
not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of 
discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them 
singly or together. 



THE MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED 43 



The Mystery of Existence Remains 
Unexplained 

1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of 
all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or 
whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpreta- 
tion, with its discovery and formulation of law and 
order, with its methods of measuring and computing. 
More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in ever- 
lasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety ; 
there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and 
mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all 
things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over 
which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are 
borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be 
first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It 
could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its 
too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can 
fitly speak of and love as religion — the sense of mystery 
and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of 
phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses, — has 
its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and 
history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But 
mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. 
It is only to a very superficial study that it could 
appear as though nature were, or ever could become, 
plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds 
its depths from all investigation could ever be torn 
away. From this point of view it would make no 



44 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



difference even though the attempt to range the whole 
realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were 
to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the 
first of our main propositions (p. 35). 

In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a 
little on the relation of " explanation " and " descrip- 
tion " to one another, and on what is meant by " estab- 
lishing laws " and " understanding " in general. The 
aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To 
understand it obviously means something more than 
merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know 
things, that is, to know what, how many, and what 
different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, 
we want to understand them, to know how they came 
to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they 
are. The first step towards this understanding is merely 
to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disen- 
tangle the things and processes of the world, grouping 
them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively. 

But what I have merely described I have not yet 
understood ; I am only preparing to try to understand 
it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, 
and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for de- 
scribing is not explaining ; it is only challenging ex- 
planation. The next step is to discover and formulate 
the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes 
and follows them out into their changes and stages he 
discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly 
defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and con- 



THE MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED 45 



nection in things and occurrences, and he formulates 
these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity 
which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes 
distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is 
actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as 
to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, 
breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his 
acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For 
science does not merely mean acquaintance with phe- 
nomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, 
manifold and varied as that may be ; it is the discovery 
and establishment of the laws and general modes of 
occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, 
but we should not have science. And to discover this 
network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in 
the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living 
substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all 
investigation. We are still far away from this goal, 
and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever 
reach it. 

But if the goal should ever be reached, if. in other 
words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what 
must result if occurrences a and b are given, or 
what a and b must have been when c occurs, would 
explanation then have taken the place of description ? 
Or would understanding have replaced mystery ? 
Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been sup- 
posed that this would be the case. People have ima- 
gined they have understood, when they have seen that 



46 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



" that is always so, and that it always happens in this 
particular way." But this is a naive idea. The region 
of the described has merely become larger, and the 
riddle has become more complex. For now we have 
before us not only the things themselves, but the more 
marvellous laws which " govern " them. But laws are not 
forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything 
to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as 
in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to 
know how they are, whence they come, and why they 
are as they are and not quite different. The fact 
that we have described them simply excites still more 
strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to 
be able to answer the question " Why ? " 

Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls 
its previous descriptions " merely historical," and it 
desires to supplement these with aetiology, causal ex- 
planation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will 
make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so 
deeply into the nature of things that it will see pre- 
cisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of 
development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just 
the meaning of the "reductions" of which we have 
already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal 
formation, "explanation" will have replaced descrip- 
tion only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and 
laws according to which a particular crystal always and 
necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are 
able to show why, from a particular mixture and because 



THE MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED 47 



of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other 
more primary, more remote, but also intelligible condi- 
tions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should 
always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were 
possible, the " law " would also be explained, and would 
therefore become superfluous. From this and similar 
examples we can learn at what point " explanation " 
begins to replace description, namely, when processes 
resolve themselves into simpler processes from the con- 
currence of which they arise. This is exactly what 
natural science desires to bring about, and what 
naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby 
solving the riddle of existence. 

But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only 
becomes " explanation " when these simpler terms are 
themselves clear and intelligible and not merely simple ; 
that is to say, when we can immediately see why the 
simpler process occurs, and by what means it is brought 
about, when the question as to the " why " is no 
longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the 
process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is 
a matter of course, indisputable, and requiring no 
proof. If this is not the case, the reduction to simpler 
terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one 
unintelligibility by another, one description by another, 
and so simply pushed back the whole problem. Natu- 
ralism supposes that by this gradual pushing back the 
task will at least become more and more simple, until 
at last a point is reached where the riddle will solve 



48 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



itself, because description becomes equivalent to ex- 
planation. This final stage is supposed to be found in 
the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which the 
smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out 
of the endlessly varied correlations of these there arise 
all higher forms of energy and all the combinations 
which make up more complex phenomena. 

But in reality this does not help us at all. For now 
we are definitely brought face to face with the quite 
unanswerable question, How, from all this homogeneity 
and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we 
account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so 
marked a characteristic of this world ? Whence came 
the causes of the syntheses to higher unities, the reasons 
for the combination into higher resultants of energy ? 

But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we 
have not yet reached the ultimate point. For can 
"attraction,"" influence at a distance, vis a f route, be 
considered as a fact which is in itself clear ? Is it not 
rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be 
called upon to explain ? Assuredly. And therefore 
the attempt is made to penetrate still deeper to the 
ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler 
terms, by referring all actual " forces " and reducing 
all movement, and therewith all 64 action," to terms of 
attraction and repulsion, which are free from anything 
mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambigu- 
ously and plainly set forth in the law of the parallel- 
ogram of forces. Law ? Set forth ? Therefore still 



THE MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED 49 

only description ? Certainly only description, not ex- 
planation in the least. Even assuming that it is true, 
instead of a mere Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles 
of nature can be traced back to matter moved by attrac- 
tion and repulsion according to the simplest laws of these, 
they would still only be summed up into a great general 
riddle, which is only the more colossal because it is able 
to embrace all others within itself. For attraction and 
repulsion, the transference of motion, and the combina- 
tion of motion according to the law of the parallelogram 
of forces — all this is merely description of processes whose 
inner causes we do not understand, which appear simple, 
and are so, but are nevertheless not self-evident or to 
be taken as a matter of course ; they are not in them- 
selves intelligible, but form an absolute " world-riddle." 
From the very root of things there gazes at us the 
same Sphinx which we had apparently driven from the 
foreground. 

But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is 
an impossible and never-ending task. There is fresh 
confusion at every step. In reducing to simpler terms, 
it is often forgotten that the principle of combination 
is not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be 
"reduced.'" Or else there is an ignoring of the fact 
that a transition has been made, not from resultants to 
components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena. 
Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler 
terms, and mistaken as it would be to remain prema- 
turely at the level of description, it cannot be denied 



50 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts 
which must simply be accepted where they occur, indis- 
putable, inexplicable, impenetrable, the " whence " and 
the " how " of their existence quite uncomprehended. 
And this is especially true of every new and peculiar 
expression of what we call energy and energies. 
Gravitation cannot be reduced to terms of attraction 
and repulsion, nor action at a distance to action at 
close quarters ; it might, indeed, be shown that repul- 
sion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can 
become possible ; the " energies " of ponderable matter 
cannot be reduced to the 66 ether " and its processes 
of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical 
affinities to the attraction of masses in general or 
to gravity. And thus the series ascends throughout 
the spheres of nature up to the mysterious direc- 
tive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable 
phenomena of movement in the living substance, 
perhaps even to the functions of will-power. All 
these can be discovered, but not really understood. 
They can be described, but not explained. And we 
are absolutely ignorant as to why they should have 
emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth 
really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious 
lap. Neither what nature reveals to us nor what it 
conceals from us is in any true sense " comprehended," 
and we flatter ourselves that we understand her secrets 
when we have only become accustomed to them. If we 
try to break the power of this accustomedness and to 



EVOLUTION AND NEW BEGINNINGS 51 



consider the actual relations of things there dawns in 
us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions 
and experience ; the feeling of the mysterious and enig- 
matical, of the abyssmal depths beneath, and of what 
lies far above our comprehension, alike in regard to 
our own existence and every other. The world is at no 
point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. 
Its laws are only formulated riddles. 



Evolution and New Beglxxixgs 

All this throws an important light upon two subjects 
which are relevant in this connection, but which cannot 
here be exhaustively dealt with, — evolution and new 
beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the mar- 
vellous range and diversity of the characteristic 
chemical properties and interrelations of substances. 
Each one of them, contrasted with the preceding lower 
forms and stages of " energy," contrasted with mere 
attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something abso- 
lutely new, a new interpolation (of course not in regard 
to time but to grade), a phenomenon which cannot be 
"explained" by what has gone before. It simply 
occurs, and we find it in its own time and place. We 
may call this new emergence " evolution," and we may 
use this term in connection with every new stage higher 
than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a 
crude and quantitative sense, according to which the 
" more highly evolved " is nothing more than an 



52 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



addition and combination of what was already there ; 
it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to 
which the more developed is a higher analogue of the 
less developed, but is in its own way as independent, as 
much a new beginning as each of the antecedent stages, 
and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from 
them nor reducible to them. 

It must be noted that in this sense evolution and 
new beginnings are already present at a very early stage 
in nature and are part of its essence. We must bear 
this in mind if we are rightly to understand the subtler 
processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher 
level. It is illusory to suppose that it is a " natural " 
assumption to " derive " the living from lower processes 
in nature. The non-living and the inorganic are also 
underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap 
from the inorganic to the organic is simply much 
greater than that from attraction in general to chemical 
affinity. As a matter of fact, the first occurrence — 
undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal 
necessity — of crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation 
has just the same marvellousness as everything indi- 
vidual and everything new in any ascending series in 
nature. In short, every new beginning has the same 
marvel. 

Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing 
light upon or suggesting the proper basis for a study 
of the domain of mind and of history. It is immedi- 
ately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into a 



EVOLUTION AND NEW BEGINNINGS 53 



region of phenomena which cannot be derived from any- 
thing antecedent, or reduced to anything lower. It must 
be one of the chief tasks of naturalism to explain away 
these facts, and to maintain the sway of " evolution," 
not in our sense but in its own, that is " to explain " 
everything new and individual from that which precedes 
it. But the assertion that this can be done is here 
doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be 
proved that methods of study which are relatively valid 
for natural phenomena are applicable also to those of 
the mind. And in the second place we must admit that 
even in nature — apart from mind — we have to do with 
new beginnings which are underivable from their ante- 
cedents. 

All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from 
its very foundations upwards through each successively 
higher stage of its evolution, in an increasing degree, 
until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of 
individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself 
into nature as supernatural or miraculous, but is funda- 
mentally implicit in it, a mystery that in its unfolding 
assuredly follows the strictest law, the most inviolable 
rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade 
of energies reveals itself, or whether — unquestionably 
also in obedience to everlasting law — the physical and 
chemical conditions admit of the occurrence of life, or 
whether in his own time and place a genius arises.* 

* This has been urged often enough even by scientific investigators. 
In such cases they have frequently been reproached for dragging 



54 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



The Dependence of the Order of Nature 

(2 and 3). The " dependence 11 of all things is the second 
requirement of religion, without which it is altogether 
inconceivable. We avoid the words " creation " and 
" being created, 11 because they involve anthropomorphic 
and altogether insufficient modes of representation. But 
throughout we have in mind, as suggested by Schleier- 

miracles into nature when they call a halt in face of the " underivable " 
and the " mysterious." This is a complete misunderstanding. With 
miracles and with the supernatural in the historical sense of these 
words, this mode of regarding nature has nothing whatever to do. It 
would be much more reasonable to maintain the converse : that 
there exists between supernatural ideas and the belief in the absolute 
explicability and rationalisation of nature a peculiar mutual relation 
and attraction. For, if we think out the relation clearly, we must 
see that all real and consistent belief in miracles demands as its most 
effective background the clearest possible explicability of nature. It- 
pictures to itself two natures, so to speak : nature arid supernature, 
and the latter of these interpolates itself into the former in the form 
of sudden and occasional interruptions ; that is to say, as miracles. 
The purpose of miracles is to be recognised as such, as events abso- 
lutely different from the ordinary course of happening. And they 
are most likely thus to be recognised when nature itself is translucent 
and mathematical. Thus we find that supernaturalism quite readily 
accepts, and even insists upon a rationalistic explanation of nature. 
But this is quite incorrect. Nature is not so thoroughly rationalised 
and calculable as such a point of view would have us believe. 

The really religious element in belief in miracles is that it, too, in 
its own way, is seeking after mystery, dependence and providence. 
It fails because it naively seeks for these in isolated and exceptional 
acts, which have no analogy to other phenomena. It regards these 
as arbitrary acts, and does so because it overlooks or underestimates 
the fact that they have to be reckoned with throughout the whole of 
nature. 



THE DEPENDENCE OF NATURE 



macher's expression already quoted, what all religion 
means when it declares nature and the world to be 
creatures. The inalienable content of this idea is that 
deep and assured feeling that our nature and all nature 
does not rest in its own strength and self-sufficiency, 
that there must be more secure reasons for nature which 
are absolutely outside of it. and that it is dependent 
upon, and conditioned through and through by some- 
thing above itself, independent, and unconditioned. u I 
believe that God has created me together with all 
creatures."" (Luther.) 

This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when 
men's eyes were not vet opened to see the deep- 
lying connectedness of all phenomena, the inexorable- 
ness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in 
the apparently numerous interruptions of the causal 
sequences, the frailty and dependence of this world 
and its need for heavenly aid could be directly observed, 
when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the 
world was "nothing"" and perishable, that it had been 
called forth out of nothing, and that in its transient 
nature it carried for ever the traces of this origin. 
But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this depend- 
ence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable 
laws and unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto 
itself, so that for every phenomenon a sufficient cause 
is to be found within nature, that is, in the sum of the 
antecedent states and conditions which, according to 
inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows. 



56 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

We have already noted that this is most obviously 
discernible in the world of the great masses, the 
heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from ever- 
lasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning them- 
selves and betraying no need for or dependence upon 
anything outside of themselves. Everything, even the 
smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the 
dependence of each upon all and of all upon each. 
There is no variation, no change of position for which 
an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the 
system as a whole, which works like an immense 
machine. Nothing indicates dependence upon any- 
thing external. And as it is to-day so it was yesterday, 
and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of 
years ago. It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that 
something which does not occur to-day was necessary at 
an earlier period, and that everything has not been 
from all eternity just as it is now. 

We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this 
character of independence and self-sufficiency from the 
astronomical world to the world as a whole. Shall we 
attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but sur- 
render the realm of the heavenly bodies as already con- 
quered ? By no means. For religion cannot exclude 
the solar system from the dependence of all being upon 
God. And this very example is the most conspicuous 
one, the one in regard to which the whole problem can 
be most definitely formulated. 

Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are 



THE DEPENDENCE OF NATURE 57 



governed by a marvellous far-reaching uniformity of 
law, which unites in strictest harmony the nearest 
and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon 
the problem of the dependence of the world ? No. 
It surely cannot be that a world without order could be 
brought under the religious point of view more readily 
than one governed by law ! Let us suppose for a 
moment that we had to do with a world without strict 
nexus and definite order of sequence, without law and 
without order, full of capricious phenomena, unregulated 
associations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world 
would be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But 
it would not necessarily be more " dependent," more 
" conditioned " than any other. Had I no other reasons 
for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as 
dependent on something outside of itself, the absence of 
law and order would assuredly furnish me with none. 
For, assuming that it is possible at all to conceive of a 
world and its contents as independent, and as containing 
its own sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite 
as easily thought of as a confused lawless play of 
chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more 
easily ; for it goes without saying that such a con- 
glomeration of promiscuous chances could not possibly 
be thought of as a world of God. Order and strict 
obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required 
by faith in God, are indeed a direct and inevitable pre- 
liminary to thinking of the world as dependent upon 
God. Thus we may state the paradox, that only a 



58 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives us the 
impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be con- 
ceived of as actually dependent upon God, as His 
creation. If any man desires to stop short at the 
consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the 
Cosmos and its obedience to law, and refuses to recog- 
nise any reasons outside of the world for this, we should 
hardly be able, according to our own proposition, to 
require him to go farther. For we maintained that 
God could not be read out of nature, that the idea of 
God could never have been gained in the first instance 
from a study of nature and the world. The problem 
always before us is rather, whether, having gained the 
idea from other sources, we can include the world within 
it. Our present question is whether the world, as it is, 
and just because it is as it is, can be conceived of as 
dependent upon God. And this question can only be 
answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller's 
oft-quoted lines : 

The great Creator 
We see not — He conceals himself within 
His own eternal laws. The sceptic sees 
Their operation, but beholds not Him, 
"Wherefore a God ! " he cries, "the world itself 
Suffices for itself I " and Christian prayer 
Ne'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy. 

God's world could not possibly be a conglomeration 
of chances ; it must be orderly, and the fact that it is 
so proves its dependence. 

But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall 



THE DEPENDENCE OF NATURE 59 



find that the assertion of the world s dependence receives 
indirect corroboration even in regard to the astronomical 
realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from certain 
suggestions which are implied in it. "We must not 
wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are 
difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and 
self-sufficiency of the world : these are, on the one hand, 
the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, 
and on the other the difficult fact of ,; entropy." We 
have already compared the world to a might v clock, or a 
machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be 
found in one of its parts, a perpetnum mobile. Let us 
however leave aside the idea of a perpetuum mobile, and 
dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It 
seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must 
be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a 
machine have come into existence and become functional 
if it is driven by wheels, which are driven bv wheels, 
which are again driven by wheels . . . and so on un- 
ceasingly ? It would not be a machine. The idea falls 
to pieces in our- hands. Yet our world is supposed to 
be just such an infinitely continuous u system. 11 How 
does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient unto 
itself ? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which 
ever winds itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in 
ceaseless repetition, adjusts the universal cycles of be- 
coming, and disappearing, and becoming again. It 
seems a corroboration of the old Heraclitian and Stoic 
conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth 



60 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



all things out of itself, and takes them back into itself 
to bring them forth anew. Even to-day the concep- 
tion is probably general that, out of the original 
states of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulae form 
themselves and throw off their rings, that the breaking 
up of these rings gives rise to planets which circle in 
solar systems for many aeons through space, till, finally, 
their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they 
plunge into their suns again, that the increased heat 
restores the original state and the whole play begins 
anew. 

All this was well enough in the days of naively 
vitalistic ideas of the world as having a life and 
soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the strict 
calculation of the amount of energy used, and the 
mechanical theory of heat. The world- clock cannot 
wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity to the trans- 
formation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, 
since movement and work take place within it, there is 
in the clock as a whole just as in every one of its parts, 
a mighty process of relaxation of an originally tense 
spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the 
stored potential energy into work and ultimately into 
heat. And with every revolution of the earth and its 
moon the world is moving slowly but inexorably towards 
a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of 
tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed 
into heat, in which there will be no different states but 
only the most uniform distribution, in which also all 



" CONTINGENCY " OF THE WORLD 61 



life and all movement will cease and the world-clock 
itself will come to a standstill. 

How does this fit in with the idea of independence 
and self-sufficiency ? How could the world-clock ever 
wind itself up again to the original state of tension 
which was simply there as if shot from a pistol " in the 
beginning " ? Where is the everlasting impressive uni- 
formity and constancy of the world? How does it 
happen that the world-clock has not long ago come to 
a standstill ? For even if the original sum of potential 
energy is postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies 
behind us is also infinite. And so one infinity swallows 
another. And innumerable questions of a similar 
kind are continually presenting themselves. 



The (t Contingency " of the World. 

But we need not dwell in the meantime on these and 
the many other difficulties and riddles presented by our 
cosmological hypothesis. However these may be solved, a 
general consideration will remain — namely, that whether 
the world is governed by law or not, whether it is suffi- 
cient unto itself or not, there is a world full of the most 
diverse phenomena, and there are laws. Whence then 
have both these come ? Is it a matter of course, is it 
quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that 
they should be exactly as they are ? We do not here 
appeal without further ceremony to the saying " every- 
thing must have a cause, therefore the world also. 11 It 



62 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



is not absolutely correct. For instance, if the world 
were so constituted that it would be impossible for it 
not to exist, that the necessity for its existence and the 
inconceivability of its non-existence were at once ex- 
plicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in 
inquiring after a cause. In regard to a " necessary " 
thing, if there were any such, we cannot ask, " Why, 
and from what cause does this exist ? " If it was neces- 
sary, that implies that to think of it as not existing 
would be ridiculous, and logically or metaphysically 
impossible. Unfortunately there are no " necessary " 
things, so that we cannot illustrate the case by 
examples. But there are at least necessary truths 
as distinguished from contingent truths. And thus 
some light may be brought into the matter for the 
inexpert. For instance, a necessary truth is contained 
in the sentence, "Everything is equal to itself, " or, 
" The shortest distance between two points is a straight 
line." We cannot even conceive of the contrary. 
Therefore these axioms have no reasons, and can 
neither be deduced nor proved. Every question as 
to their reasons is quite meaningless. As examples of 
a " contingent " truth we may take " It rains to-day," 
or "The earth revolves round the sun." For neither 
one nor the other of these is necessarily so. It is so as 
a matter of fact, but under other circumstances it 
might have been otherwise. The contrary can be con- 
ceived of and represented, and has in itself an equal 
degree of possibility. Therefore such a fact requires to 



" CONTINGENCY " OF THE WORLD 63 

be and is capable of being reasoned out. I can and 
must ask, " How does it happen that it rains to-day ? 
What are the reasons for it ? " But as we must seek 
for sufficient reasons for " contingent " truths, that is, 
for those of which the contrary was equally possible, so 
assuredly we must seek for sufficient causes for " con- 
tingent" phenomena and events, those which can be 
thought of as not existing, or as existing in a different 
form. For these we must find causes and actual reasons. 
Otherwise they have no foundation. The element of 
" contingency * must be done away with ; they must be 
shown to result from sufficient causes. That is to say 
nothing less than that they must be traced back to some 
necessity. For it is one of the curious fundamental 
convictions of our reason, and one in which all scientific 
investigation has its ultimate roots, that what is " con- 
tingent " is only apparently so, and in reality is in some 
way or other based on necessity. Therefore reason 
seeks causes for everything. 

The search for causes involves showing that a thing 
was necessary. And this must obviously apply to the 
world as a whole. If it were quite obvious that the 
world and its existence as it is were necessary, that is, 
that it would be contrary to reason to think of the 
world, and its phenomena, and their obedience to law as 
non-existent, or as different from what they are, all 
inquiry would be at an end. This would be the ulti- 
mate necessity in which all the apparent contingency of 
isolated phenomena and existences was firmly based. 



64 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

But this is far from being the case. That anything 
exists, and that the world exists, is for us absolutely the 
greatest "contingency" of all, and in regard to it we 
can and must continually ask, " Why does anything 
exist at all, and why should it not rather be non- 
existent ? " Indeed, all our quest for sufficient causes 
here reaches its climax. In more detail : that these 
celestial systems and bodies, the ether, attraction and 
gravitation should exist, and that everything should be 
governed by definite laws, all literally " as if shot from 
a pistol," there must undoubtedly be some sufficient 
reason, certain as it is that we shall never discover it. 
It is true, as some one has said, that we live not only 
in a very fortuitous world, but in an incredibly improb- 
able one. And this is not affected by the fact that 
the world is completely governed by law. Law only con- 
firms it. The fact that all details may be clearly and 
mathematically calculated in no way prevents them 
from being fundamentally contingent. For they are 
only so calculable on the basis of the given funda- 
mental characters of the world. And that is precisely 
the problem : " Why do these characters exist and 
not quite different ones, and why should any exist at 
all ? " 

If any one should say : " Well, we must just content 
ourselves with recognising the essentially 6 contingent , 
nature of existence, for we shall never be able to get 
beyond that,'" he would be right in regard to the second 
statement. To get beyond that and to see what it is — 



THE REAL WORLD 



65 



eternal and in itself necessary — that lies at the basis of 
this world of " contingency " is indeed impossible. 
But he would be wrong as to the first part of the 
assertion. For no one will " content himself." For 
that all chance is only apparently chance, and is 
ultimately based in necessity, is a deeply-rooted and 
fundamental conviction of our reason, one which 
directs all scientific investigation, and which cannot 
be ignored. It demands ceaselessly something neces- 
sary as the permanent basis of contingent existence. 
And this fact is and remains the truth involved in the 
" cosmological proofs of the existence of God " of 
former days. It was certainly erroneous to suppose 
that " God " could be proved. For it is a long way 
from that " idea of necessity " to religious experience 
of God. And it was erroneous, too, to suppose that 
anything could be really " proved." What is necessary 
can never really be proved from what is contingent. 
But the recognition of the contingent nature of the 
world is a stimulus that stirs up within our reason 
the idea of the necessary, and it is a fact that reason 
finds rest only in this idea. 

The Real World 

(4.) What was stated separately in our first and second 
propositions, and has hitherto been discussed, now 
unites and culminates in the fourth. For if we note 
the vital expressions of religion wherever it occurs, we 
find above all one thing as its most characteristic sign, 

E 



66 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



indeed as its very essence, in all places and all times, 
often only as a scarce uttered wish or longing, but 
often breaking forth with impetuous might. This one 
thing is the impulse and desire to get beyond time and 
space, and beyond the oppressive narrowness and 
crampingness of the world surrounding us, the desire 
to see into the depth and " other side " of things and 
of existence. For it is the very essence of religion to 
distinguish this world from, and contrast it as in- 
sufficient with the real world which is sufficient, to 
regard this world which we see and know and possess 
as only an image, as only transiently real, in contrast 
with the real world of true being which is believed in. 
Religion has clothed this essential feature in a hundred 
mythologies and eschatologies, and one has always 
given place to another, the more sublimed to the more 
robust. But the fundamental feature itself cannot 
disappear. 

In apologetics and dogmatics the interest in this 
matter is often concentrated more or less exclusively 
upon the question of "immortality. 1 ' Wrongly so, 
however, for this quest after the real world is not a 
final chapter in religion, it is religion itself. And in 
the religious sense the question of immortality is only 
justifiable and significant when it is a part of the 
general religious conviction that this world is not the 
truly essential world, and that the true nature of 
things, and of our own being, is deeper than we can 
comprehend, and lies beyond this side of things, beyond 



THE REAL WORLD 



67 



time and space. To the religious mind it cannot be of 
great importance whether existence is to be continued 
for a little at least beyond this life. In what way 
would such a wish be religious ? But the inward con- 
viction that " all that is transitory is only a parable, 11 
that all here is only a veil and a curtain, and the 
desire to get beyond semblance to truth, beyond in- 
sufficiency to sufficiency, concentrate themselves especi- 
ally in the assertion of the eternity of our true being. 

It is with this characteristic of religion that the 
spirit and method of naturalism contrast so sharply. 
Naturalism points out with special satisfaction that 
this depth of things, this home of the soul is nowhere 
discoverable. The great discoveries of Copernicus, 
Kepler, and Newton have done away with the possibility 
of that. No empyrean, no corner of the world remains 
available. Even the attempted flight to sun, moon, or 
stars does not help. It is true that the newly dis- 
covered world is without end, but, beyond a doubt, in 
its outermost and innermost depths it is a world of 
space and time. Even in the stellar abysses " every- 
thing is just the same as with us." 

All this is doubtless correct, and it is very wholesome 
for religion. For it prompts religion no longer to 
seek its treasure, the true nature of things, and its 
everlasting home in time and space, as the mythologies 
and eschatologies have sought them repeatedly. It 
throws religion back on the fundamental insight and 
on the convictions which it had attained long before 



68 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



philosophy and criticism of knowledge had arrived at 
similar views: namely, that time and space, and this 
world of time and space, do not comprise the whole of 
existence, nor existence as it really is, but are only a 
manifestation of it to our finite and limited knowledge. 
Before the days of modern astronomy, and without its 
help, religion knew that God was not confined to 
" heaven," or anywhere in space, and that time as it is 
for us was not for Him. Even in the terms " eternity w 
and " infinity " it shows an anticipatory knowledge of 
a being and reality above time and space. These ideas 
were not gained from a contemplation of nature, but 
before it and from independent sources. 

But though it is by no means the task of apologetics 
to build up these ideas directly from a study of things, 
it is of no little importance to inquire whether religion 
possesses in these convictions only postulates of faith, 
for which it must laboriously and forcibly make a 
place in the face of knowledge, or whether a thorough 
and self-critical knowledge does not rather confirm 
them, and show us, within the world of knowledge 
itself, unmistakable signs that it cannot be the true, 
full reality, but points to something beyond itself. 

To study this question thoroughly would involve 
setting forth a special theory of knowledge and existence. 
This cannot be attempted here. But Kant's great 
doctrine of the "Antinomy of Reason" has for all 
time broken up for us the narrowness of the naturalistic 
way of thinking. Every one who has felt cramped by 



OUR CONCEPTION OF TIME 69 



the narrow limits in which reality was confined by a 
purely mundane outlook must have experienced the 
liberating influence of the Kantian Antinomy if he has 
thought over it carefully. The thick curtain which 
separates being from appearance seems to be torn 
away, or at any rate to reveal itself as a curtain. Kant 
shows that, if we were to take this world as it lies before 
us for the true reality, we should land in inextricable 
contradictions. These contradictions show that the 
true world itself cannot coincide with our thought and 
comprehension, for in being itself there can be no 
contradictions. Otherwise it would not exist. The 
ancient problems of philosophy, from the time of the 
Eleatic school onwards, find here their adequate formu- 
lation. Kant's disciple, Fries, has carried the matter 
further, and has attempted to develop what for Kant 
still remained a sort of embarrassment of reason to more 
precise pronouncements as to the relation of true being 
to its manifestation. 

The Antinomy of Our Conception of Time 

A few examples may serve to make the point clear. 
The first of the antinomies is also the most impres- 
sive. It brings before us the insufficiency of our 
conceptions of time, and shows the impossibility of 
transferring, from the world as it appears to us, to real 
Being any mode of conceiving time which we possess. 
The difficulty is, whether we are to think of our world 
as having had a beginning or not. The naive outlook 



70 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



will at once assume without further ado a beginning of 
all things. Everything must have had a beginning, 
though that may have been a very long time ago. But 
on more careful reflection it is found impossible to 
imagine this, and then the assumption that things had 
no beginning is made with as little scruple. Let us 
suppose that the beginning of things was six thousand, 
or, what is quite as easy, six thousand billion years ago. 
We are at once led to ask what there was the year 
before or many years before, and what there was before 
that again, and so on until we face the infinite and 
beginningless. Thus we find that we have never really 
thought of a beginning of things, and never could think 
of it, but that our thinking always carries us into the 
infinite. Time, at any rate, we have thought of as 
infinite. We may then amuse ourselves by trying to 
conceive of endless time as empty, but we shall hardly 
be able to give any reason for arriving at that idea. 
If time goes back to infinity, it seems difficult to see 
why it should not always have been filled, instead of 
only being so filled from some arbitrary point. And 
in any case the very fact of the existence of time 
makes the problem of beginning or not beginning 
insoluble. For such reasons Aristotle asserted that 
the world had no beginning, and rejected the contrary 
idea as childish. 

But the idea of no beginning is also childish or 
rather impossible, and in reality inconceivable. For if 
it be assumed that the world and time have never had 



CONDITIONED AND UNCONDITIONED 71 



a beginning, there stretches back from the time at which 
I now find myself a past eternity. It must have passed 
completely as a whole, for otherwise this particular 
point in time could never have been arrived at. So 
that I must think of an infinity which nevertheless 
comes to an end. I cannot do this. It would be like 
wooden iron. 

The matter sounds simple but is nevertheless difficult 
in its consequences. It confronts us at once with the 
fact, confirmed by the theory of knowledge, that time as 
we know it is an absolutely necessary and fundamental 
form of our conceptions and knowledge, but is likewise 
the veil over what is concealed, and cannot be carried 
over in the same form into the true nature of things. 
As the limits and contradictions in the time-conception 
reveal themselves to us, there wakes in us the idea which 
we accept as the analogue of time in true being, an idea 
of existence under the form of " eternity," which, since 
we are tied down to temporal concepts, cannot be 
expressed or even thought of with any content.* 

The Antinomy of the Conditioned and the 
Unconditioned 

The antinomy of the conditioned and the uncondi- 
tioned leads us along similar lines. Every individual 
finite thing or event is dependent on its causes and 

* Not even after the scholastic manner of regarding eternity as a 
"nunc stans," a stationary now, an everlasting'present. "Present " is 
a moment in our own time, and an " everlasting " present is nonsense, 



72 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-rela- 
tion with it. It is conditioned, and is only possible 
through its conditions. But that implies that it can 
only occur or be granted when all its conditions are 
first given in complete synthesis. If any one of 
them failed, it would not have come about. But 
every one of its conditioning circumstances is in its 
turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one 
of these again by others, and so on into the infinite, 
backwards and on all sides, so that here again some- 
thing without end and incapable of end must have 
come to an end, and must be thought of as having 
an end, before any event whatever can really come to 
pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility for our 
thinking : we require and must demand something 
completed, because now is really now, and something 
happens now, and yet in the world as it appears to us 
we are always forced to face what cannot have an end. 

The Antinomy of Our Conception of Space 

To bring our examples to a conclusion, we find 
the same sort of antinomy in regard to space, and the 
world as it is extended in space. Here, too, it becomes 
apparent that space as we imagine it, and as we carry it 
with us as a concept for arranging our sense-impressions, 
cannot correspond to the true reality. As in regard to 
time, so also in regard to space, we can never after any 
distance however enormous come to a halt and say, " Here 
is the end of space." Whether we think of the diameter 



OUR CONCEPTION OF SPACE 73 



of the earth's orbit or the distance to Sirius, and multiply 
them by a million we always ask, " What lies behind ? " 
and so extend space into the infinite. And as a matter 
of course we people it also without end with heavenly 
bodies, stars, nebulae, Milky Ways and the like. For 
here again there can be no obvious reason why space in 
our neighbourhood should be filled, while space at a 
greater distance should be thought of as empty. There- 
fore we actually think of star beyond star, and, as far as 
we can reckon, stars beyond that without end. For 
space extends not merely so far, but always farther. 
And the number of the stars is not so many, but always 
one more. This sounds quite obvious, but it has exactly 
the same impossibility as we found in our "past infinity. " 
For although we are carried by our conceptions into the 
infinite, and to what never could have an end, it is 
impossible to assume the same of reality. 

It is remarkable and quite characteristic that the 
whole difficulty and its peculiar nature become much 
more intelligible to us through the familiar images and 
expressions of religion. There we readily admit that 
we cannot comprehend the number of the stars and 
stellar spaces, because for us they never reach an end, 
there being always one more ; but that in the eyes of 
God all is embraced in His universality, in a " perfect 
synthesis,"" and that to Him Being is never and in no 
point " always one more." God does not count. 

Without the help of religious expressions we say : 
Being itself is always itself and never implies any more ; 



74 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



for if there were " always one more " it would not be 
Being. It can only exist " as a perfect synthesis," 
which does not mean an endless number, which never- 
theless somewhere comes to an end — again wooden iron 
— but something above all reckoning and beyond all 
number, as it is beyond space and time. And that 
which we are able to weigh and measure and number is 
therefore not reality itself, but only its inadequate 
manifestation to our limited capacity for understanding. 

But enough of this. The puzzles in the doctrines of 
the simple and the complex, of the causeless and the 
caused, into which this world of ours forces us, should 
teach us further to recognise it for what it is — insuffi- 
cient and pointing beyond itself,— to its own transcen- 
dent depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we 
penetrate farther and farther into the ever more and 
more minute, and the indefiniteness of our thought- 
horizons in general should have the same effect. 

Intuitions of Reality 

(5.) There are other evidences of this depth and 
hidden nature of things, towards which an examination 
of our knowledge points. For " in feeling and intuition 
appearance points beyond itself to real being." So ran 
our fifth proposition. This subject indeed is delicate, 
and can only be treated of in the hearing of willing 
ears. But all apologetic counts upon willing ears ; it 
is not conversion of doubters that is aimed at, it is 
religion which seeks to reassure itself. Our proposition 



INTUITIONS OF REALITY 



75 



does not speak of dreams but of facts, which are not 
the less facts because they are more subtle than others. 
What we are speaking of are the deep impressions, 
which cannot properly be made commensurable at all, 
which may spring up directly out of an inward experi- 
ence, an apprehension of nature, the world and history, 
in the depths of the spirit. They call forth in us an 
" anamnesis," a " reminiscence " in Plato's sense, awaken- 
ing within us moods and intuitions in which something 
of the essence and meaning of being is directly experi- 
enced, although it remains in the form of feeling, 
and cannot easily, if at all, find expression in de- 
finable ideas or clear statements. Fries, in his book, 
44 Wissen, Glaube, und Ahnung," unhappily too much 
forgotten, takes account of this fact, for he places this 
region of spiritual experience beside the certainties of 
faith and knowledge, and regards these as " animated " 
by it. He has in mind especially the impressions of the 
beautiful and the sublime which far transcend our 
knowledge of nature, and to which knowledge and its 
concepts can never do adequate justice, facts though 
they undoubtedly are. In them we experience directly, 
in intuitive feeling, that the reality is greater than our 
power of understanding, and we feel something of its 
true nature and meaning. The utterances of Schleier- 
macher* in regard to religion follow the same lines. 
For this is precisely what he means when he insists 

* " Reden iiber die Religion, an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verach- 
tera." Neu herausgegeben von R. Otto. 1906. 



76 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



that the universe must be experienced in intuition and 
feeling as well as in knowing and doing. He is less 
incisive in his expressions than Fries, but wider in ideas- 
He includes in this domain of " intuitive feeling " not 
only the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful and sub- 
lime, but takes the much more general and comprehensive 
view, that the receptive mind may gather from the finite 
impressions of the infinite, and may through its experi- 
ences of time gain some conception of the eternal. And 
he rightly emphasises, that such intuition has its true 
place in the sphere of mind and in face of the events of 
history, rather than in the outer court of nature. He, 
too, lays stress on the fact that doctrinal statements 
and ideas cannot be formulated Out of such subtle 
material. 

The experience of which we are speaking may be most 
directly and impressively gained from the great, the 
powerful, the sublime in nature. It may be gained from 
the contemplation of nature's harmonies and beauties, 
but also of her overflowing abundance and her enigma- 
tical daemonic strength, from the purposeful intelligi- 
bility as well as the terrifying and bewildering enigmas of 
nature's operations, from all the manifold ways in which 
the mind is affected and startled, from all the suggestive 
but indefinable sensations which may be roused in us 
by the activity of nature, and which rise through a 
long scale to intoxicated self-forgetfulness and wordless 
ecstasy before her beauty, and her half-revealed, half- 
concealed mystery. If any or all of these be stirred up 



THE RECOGNITION OF PURPOSE 



in a mind which is otherwise godless or undevout, it 
remains an indefinite, vacillating feeling, bringing with 
it nothing else. But in the religious mind it immedi- 
ately unites with what is akin to it or of similar nature, 
and becomes worship. No dogmas or arguments for 
disputatious reasoning can be drawn from it. It can 
hardly even be expressed, except, perhaps, in music. 
And if it be expressed it tends easily to become fan- 
tastic or romantic pomposity, as is shown even by 
certain parts of the writings of Schleiermacher himself. 

The Recogxitiox of Purpose 

(6.) We must now turn to the question of " tele- 
ology." Only now, not because it is a subordinate 
matter, for it is in reality the main one, but because it 
is the culminating point, not the starting point, of our 
argument. If the world be from God and of God, it 
and all that it contains must be for some definite pur- 
pose and for special ends. It must be swayed by eternal 
ideas, and must be subject to divine providence and 
guidance. But naturalism, and even, it appears, natural 
science, declares : Neither purposes nor ideas are of 
necessity to be assumed in nature. They do not occur 
either in the details or in the whole. The whole is an 
absolutely closed continuity of causes, a causal but blind 
machinery, in regard to which we cannot ask, What is 
meant to be produced by this ? but only, What causes have 
produced what exists ? This opposition goes deep and 
raises difficulties. And in all vindication or defence 



78 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



of religion it ought rightly to be kept in the foreground 
of attention, although the points we have already in- 
sisted on have been wrongly overlooked. The opposi- 
tion concentrates itself to-day almost entirely around 
two theories of naturalism, which do not, indeed, set 
forth the whole case, but which are certainly typical 
examples, so that, if we analyse them, we shall have 
arrived at an orientation of the fundamental points 
at issue. The two doctrines are Darwinism and the 
mechanical theory of life, and it is to these that we 
must now turn our attention. And since the best 
elucidation and criticism of both theories is to be found 
in their own history, and in the present state of 
opinion within their own school, we shall have to com- 
bine our study of their fundamental principles with that 
of their history. 

We can here set forth, however, only the chief point 
of view, the gist of the matter, which will continue to 
exist and hold good however the analysis of details may 
turn out. For the kernel of the question may be 
discussed independently, without involving the par- 
ticular interests of zoology or biology, though we shall 
constantly come across particular and concrete cases of 
the main problem in our more detailed study. 

The struggle against, and the aversion to ideas and 
purposes on the part of the nature-interpreters is not in 
itself directed against religion. It does not arise from 
any antagonism of natural science to the religious con- 
ception of the world, but is primarily an antagonism of 



THE RECOGNITION OF PURPOSE 79 



one school of science to another, the modem against 
the mediaeval- Aristotelian. The latter, again, was not 
in itself a religious world-outlook, it was simply an 
attempt at an interpretation of the processes of nature, 
and especially of evolution, which might be quite 
neutral towards religion, or might be purely naturalistic. 
It was the theory of Entelechies and formce substan- 
iales. In order to explain how a thing had come to 
be, it taught that the idea of the finished thing, the 
4 6 form," was implicit in it from the very beginning, and 
determined the course of its development. This 
" form," the end aimed at in development, was " poten- 
tially," " ideally," or " virtually " implicit in the thing 
from the beginning, was the causa Jinalis, the ultimate 
cause which determined the development. Modern 
natural science objects to this theory that it offers no 
explanation, but merely gives a name to what has to 
be explained. The aim of science, it tells us, is to 
elucidate the play of causes which brought about a 
particular result. The hypothetical causa finalis it 
regards as a mere asylum iguoraiitia?, and as the 
problem itself not as its solution. For instance, if we 
inquire into the present form and aspect of the earth, 
nothing is advanced by stating that the " form," the 
primitive model of the evolving earth was implicit in it 
from the beginning, and that it gradually determined 
the phases and transition-stages of its evolution, until 
the ultimate state, the end aimed at, was attained. 
The task of science is, through geology, geognosy, 



80 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



mineralogy, geodesy, physical geography, meteorology, 
and other sciences to discover the physical, chemical, 
and mechanical causes of the earth's evolution and their 
laws, and from the co-operation of these to interpret 
everything in detail and as a whole. 

Whether modern natural science is right in this or 
not, whether or not it has neglected an element of 
truth in the old theory of Entelechies which it 
cannot dispense with, especially in regard to living 
organisms, it is beyond dispute that, from the most 
general point of view, and in particular with reference 
to teleology, religion does not need to concern itself in 
the least about this opposition. " Purposes," " ideas," 
" guidance" in the religious sense, are quite unaffected 
by the manner in which the result is realised ; every- 
thing depends upon the special and particular value of 
what has been attained or realised. If a concatenation 
of causes and stages of development lead to results in 
which we suddenly discern a special and particular 
value, then, and not till then, have we a reason and 
criterion for our assumption that it is not simply 
a result of a play of chances, but that it has been 
brought about by purposeful thought, by higher inter- 
vention and guidance of things. Certainly not before 
then. Thus we can only speak of purposes, aims, 
guidance, and creation in so far as we have within us 
the capacity for feeling and recognising the value, 
meaning and significance of things. But natural 
science itself cannot estimate these. It can or will only 



THE RECOGNITION OF PURPOSE 81 

examine how everything has come about, but whether 
this result has a higher value than another, or has a 
lower, or none at all, it can neither assert nor deny. 
That lies quite outside of its province. 

Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the 
highest example — man and his origin. Let it be 
assumed that natural science could discover all the 
causes and factors which, operating for many thousands 
of years, have produced man and human existence. 
Even if these causes and factors had actually been pure 
" ideas," formes substantiates and the like, that would 
in no way determine whether the whole process was 
really subject to a divine idea of purpose or not. If we 
had not gained, from a different source, an insight 
into the supreme and incomparable worth of human 
existence, spiritual, rational, and free, with its capacity 
for morality, religion, art and science, we should be 
compelled to regard man, along with every other 
natural result, as the insignificant product of a blind 
play of nature. But, on the other hand, if we have 
once felt and recognised this value of human existence, 
its highest dignity, the knowledge that man has been 
produced through a play of highly complex natural 
processes, fulfilling themselves in absolute obedience to 
law, in no way prevents our regarding him as a " pur- 
pose," as the realisation of a divine idea, in accordance 
with which nature in its orderliness was planned. In 
fact, this consideration leads us to discover and admire 
eternal plan and divine guidance in nature. 

F 



82 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



For it does not rest with natural science either to 
discover or to deny 44 purpose " in the religious sense in 
nature ; it belongs to quite a different order of experi- 
ence, an entirely inward one. Just in proportion as I 
become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my 
inward experience and through my capacity of esti- 
mating values, the worth of the spiritual and moral life 
of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar mode of 
conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events 
and causes on which the possibility and the occurrence of 
the spiritual and moral life depend, to an eternal tele- 
ology, and see the order of the world that leads to this 
illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence. 

Teleological and Scientific Interpretations 
are Alike Necessary 

(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to 
a teleological interpretation. And to a teleological 
study in this sense the strictly causal interpretations of 
natural science are not hostile, but indispensable. For 
how do things stand ? Natural science endeavours by 
persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts 
occurring in our world, up to the existence of man, 
as the final outcome and result of an age-long process 
of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever 
higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law- 
governed sequences, and finally to connect it with the 
primary and simplest fundamental facts of existence, 
beyond which it cannot go, and which must simply be 



TELEOLOGY AND SCIENCE 83 



accepted as "given." If these results of this causally 
interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward 
power of valuation as full of meaning and value, indeed 
of the deepest and most incomparable value, the causal 
mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its 
results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal 
a peculiarity which was previously not discoverable, 
yet which is their highest import. They become a 
strictly united system of means. And purposefulness 
as a potentiality is thus carried back to the very 
foundation and " beginning," to the fundamental con- 
ditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself. The 
strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing 
more than the " endeavour after end and aim," the 
carrying through and realisation of the eternal purpose, 
which was implicit potentially in the fundamental 
nature of things. The absolute obedience to law, and 
the inexorableness of chains of sequence are, instead of 
being fatal to this position, indispensable to it. When 
there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system 
of means is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the 
purpose can be realised, and therefore that intention 
can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the 
fundamental factors of the world's existence, in the 
strict nexus of causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the 
results which are determined by both these, and which 
reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose, tele- 
ology and providence are directly realised. The only 
assumptions are, that it is possible to judge the results 



84 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



according to their value, and that both the original 
nature of the world andthe system of its causal sequences 
— that is, the world as we know it — can be conceived of 
in accordance with the ideas of dependence and con- 
ditionedness. Both assumptions are not only possible, 
but necessary. 

In thinking out this most general consideration, we 
find the real and fundamental answer to the question 
as to the validity and freedom of the religious concep- 
tion of the world with regard to teleology in nature. 
And if it be held fast and associated with the insight 
into the autonomy of the spiritual and its underivability 
from the natural, we are freed at once from all the 
petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of evolution, 
descent, and struggle for existence. We shall never- 
theless be obliged to discuss these to some extent, 
because it is not a matter of indifference whether the 
detailed study of natural evolution fits in more or less 
easily with the conception of purpose whose validity 
we have demonstrated in general. If that proves to be 
the case, it will be an important factor in apologetics. 
The conclusion which we have already arrived at on 
abstract grounds will then be corroborated and empha- 
sised in the concrete. 



CHAPTER IV 

DARWINISM IN GENERAL 

Darwinism, which was originally a technical theory of 
the biological schools, has long since become a veritable 
tangle of the most diverse problems and opinions, and 
seems to press hardly upon the religious conception of 
the world from many different sides. In its theory of 
blind " natural selection " and the fortuitous play of 
the factors in the struggle for existence, it appears to 
surrender the whole of this wonderful world of life to 
the rough and ready grip of a process without method 
or plan. In the general theory of evolution and the 
doctrine of the descent of even the highest from the 
lowest, it seems to take away all special dignity from the 
human mind and spirit, all the freedom and all the 
nobility of pure reason and free will ; it seems to reduce 
the higher products of religion, morality, poetry, and 
the aesthetic sense to the level of an ignoble tumult 
of animal impulses, desires and sensations. Purely 
speculative questions relative to the evolution theory, 
psychological and metaphysical, logical and epistemo- 
logical, ethical, aesthetic, and finally even historical and 
politico-economical questions have been drawn into the 



86 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

coil, and usually receive from the Darwinians an answer 
at once robust and self-assured. A zoological theory 
seems suddenly to have thrown light and intelligibility 
into the most diverse provinces of knowledge. 

But in point of fact it can be shown that Darwinism 
has not really done this and cannot do it. It leaves 
unaffected the problem of the mind with its pecu- 
liar and underivable laws, from the logical to the 
ethical. Whether it be right or wrong in its physio- 
logical theories, its genealogical trees and fortuitous 
factors, preoccupation with this theory is a task of the 
second order. Nevertheless it is necessary to study it, 
because the chief objections to the religious interpreta- 
tion of the world have come from it. 

The Development of Darwinism 

In studying it we should like to follow a method 
somewhat different from that usually observed in apolo- 
getic writings. " Darwinism,'" even in its technical, 
biological form, never was quite, and is to-day not at 
all a unified and consistent system. It has been modi- 
fied in so many ways and presented in such different 
colours, that we must either refrain altogether from 
attempting to get into close quarters with it, or we must 
make ourselves acquainted to some extent with the phases 
of the theory as it has gradually developed up to the 
present day. This is the more necessary and useful 
since it is precisely within the circle of technical experts 
that revolts from and criticisms of the Darwinian theory 



DEVELOPMENT OF DARWINISM 87 

have in recent years arisen ; and these are so incisive, so 
varied, and so instructive, that through them we can 
adjust our standpoint in relation to the theory better 
than in any other way. And in thus letting the 
biologists speak for themselves, we are spared the fatal 
task of entering into the discussion of questions belong- 
ing to a region outside our own particular studies. 

We cannot, however, give more than a short sketch. 
But even such a sketch may do more towards giving us 
a general knowledge of the question and showing us a 
way out of the difficulties it raises than any of the 
current u refutations." To supplement this sketch, and 
facilitate a thorough understanding of the problem, we 
shall give somewhat fuller references than are usual to 
the relevant literature. And the same method will be 
pursued in the following chapter, which deals with the 
mechanical theory of life. This method throws more 
upon the reader, but it is probably the most satisfactory 
one for the serious student. 

The reactions from the Darwinism of the schools 
which we have just referred to, and to which the second 
half of this chapter is devoted, are, of course, of a 
purely scientific kind. And while we are devoting our 
attention to them, we must not be unfaithful to the 
canon laid down in the previous chapter, namely that 
with reference to the question of teleology in the 
religious sense no real answer can be looked for from 
scientific study, not even if it be anti-Darwinian. In 
this case, too, it is impossible to read the convictions 



88 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



and intuitions of the religious conception of the world 
out of a scientific study of nature : they precede it. 
But here, too, we may find some accessory support and 
indirect corroboration more or less strong and secure. 
This may be illustrated by a single example. It will 
be shown that, on closer study, it is not impossible to 
subordinate even the apparently confused tangle of 
naturalistic factors of evolution which are summed up 
in the phrase " struggle for existence " to interpretation 
from the religious point of view. But matters will be 
in quite a different position if the whole theory col- 
lapses, and instead of evolution and its paths being 
given over to confusion and chance, it appears that 
from the very beginning and at every point there is a 
predetermination of fixed and inevitable lines along and 
up which it must advance. In many other connec- 
tions considerations of a like nature will reveal them- 
selves to us in the course of our study. 

Darwinism, as popularly understood, is the theory 
that " men are descended from monkeys," and in general 
that the higher forms of life are descended from the 
lower, and it is regarded as Darwin's epoch-making 
work and his chief merit — or fault according to the point 
of view — that he established the Theory of Descent. This 
is only half correct, and it leaves out the real point of 
Darwinism altogether. The Theory of Descent had its 
way prepared by the evolutionist ideas and the specu- 
lative nature-philosophy of Goethe, Schelling, Hegel 
and Oken ; by the suggestions and glimmerings of the 



DARWINISM AND TELEOLOGY 89 



nature-mysticism of the romanticists ; by the results of 
comparative anatomy and physiology ; was already 
hinted at, at least as far as derivation of species was 
concerned, in the works of Linne himself; was worked 
out in the " zoological philosophies,'" by the elder 
Darwin, by Lamarck, Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire and 
Buffon ; was in the field long before Charles Darwin's 
time ; was already in active conflict with the antagonistic 
theory of the u constancy of species," and had its more or 
less decided adherents. Yet undoubtedly it was through 
and after Darwin that the theory grew so much more 
powerful and gained general acceptance. 

Darwinism axd Teleology 

But the essential and most characteristic importance 
of Darwin and his work, the reason for which he was 
called the Newton of biology, and which makes Dar- 
winism at once interesting and dangerous to the religious 
conception of the world, is something quite special and 
new. It is its radical opposition to teleology. Du Bois- 
Revmond, in his witty lecture "Darwin versus Galiani,"* 
explains the gist of the matter. " Les des de la nature 
sont pipe's" (nature's dice are loaded). Nature is 
almost always throwing aces. She brings forth not 
what is meaningless and purposeless, but in great 
preponderance what is full of meaning and purpose. 
What " loaded " her dice like this ? Even if the 
theory of descent be true, in what way does it directly 
* Kgl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften. 1876. 



90 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



help the purely scientific interpretation of the world ? 
Would not this evolution from the lowest to the 
highest simply be a series of the most astonishing lucky 
throws of the dice by which in perplexing " endeavour 
after an aim," the increasingly perfect, and ultimately 
the most perfect is produced ? And, on the other hand, 
every individual organism, from the Amoeba up to the 
most complex vertebrate, is, in its structure, its form, its 
functions, a stupendous marvel of adaptation to its end 
and of co-ordination of the parts to the whole, and of 
the whole and its parts to the functions of the organism, 
the functions of nutrition, self-maintenance, reproduction, 
maintenance of the species, and so on. How account 
for the adaptiveness, both general and special, without 
causae finales, without intention and purposes, 
without guidance towards a conscious aim ? How can 
it be explained as the necessary result solely of causae 
efficientes, of blindly working causes without a definite 
aim ? Darwinism attempts to answer this question. 
And its answer is : " What appears to us 6 purposeful 1 
and 6 perfect 1 is in truth only the manifold adaptation 
of the forms of life to the conditions of their existence. 
And this adaptation is brought about solely by means 
of these conditions themselves. Without choice, 
without aim, without conscious purpose nature offers a 
wealth of possibilities. The conditions of existence act 
as a sieve. What chances to correspond to them main- 
tains itself, gliding through the meshes of the sieve, 
what does not perishes. 1 ' It is an old idea of the 



CHARACTERISTICS OF DARWINISM 91 

naturalistic philosophies, dating from Empedocles, which 
Darwin worked up into the theory of " natural selec- 
tion " through " the survival of the fittest " " in the 
struggle for existence." Of course the assumption 
necessary to his idea is that the forms of life are capable 
of variation, and of continually offering in ceaseless flux 
new properties and characters to the sieve of selection, 
and of being raised thereby from the originally homo- 
geneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the 
complex, from the lower to the higher. This is the 
theory of descent, and it is, of course, an essential part 
and the very foundation of Darwin's theory. But it is 
the doctrine of descent based upon natural selection 
that is Darwinism itself. ' 

The Characteristic Features of Darwinism 

We do not propose to expound the Darwinian 
theory for the hundredth time ; a knowledge of it 
must be taken for granted. We need only briefly 
call to mind the characteristic features and catchwords 
of the theory as Darwin founded it, which have also 
been the starting points of subsequent modifications 
and controversies. 

All living creatures are bound together in genetic 
solidarity. Everything has evolved through endless 
deviations, gradations, and differentiations, but at the 
same time by a perfectly continuous process. Variation 
continually produced a crop of heterogeneous novelties. 
The struggle for existence sifted these out. Heredity 



92 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



fixed and established them. Without method or plan 
variations continue to occur (indefinite variations). They 
manifest themselves in all manner of minute changes 
(" fluctuating " variations). Every part, every function 
of an organism may be subject individually to variation 
and selection. The world is strictly governed by what 
is useful. The whole organisation as well as the indi- 
vidual organs and functions bear the stamp of utility, 
at least, they must bear it if the theory is correct. In 
the general continuity the transitions are always easy ; 
there are no fundamentally distinct " types," archi- 
tectural plans, or groups of forms. Where gaps yawn 
the intermediate links have gone amissing. There is 
no fundamental difference between genas, species, and 
variety. Even the most complicated organ such as 
the eye, the most puzzling function such as the 
instinct of the bee, may be explained as the outcome 
of many more primitive stages. 

The chief evidences of the theory of descent are 
to be found in homologies, in the correspondences of 
organs and functions, as revealed by comparative 
anatomy and physiology, in the recapitulation re- 
vealed by embryology, in the structure of parasites, in 
rudimentary organs and reversions to earlier stages, in 
the distribution of animals and plants, and in the possi- 
bility of still transforming, at least to a slight extent, 
one species into another, by experimental breeding. 

Transformation and differentiation go on in nature 
as a vast, ceaseless, but blind process of selection. In 



CHARACTERISTICS OF DARWINISM 93 



artificial selection evolution is secured by choosing the 
most fit for breeding purposes ; so it is secured in 
natural selection by the favouring and survival of those 
forms which are the most fit among the many unfit or 
less fit, which happened to be exposed to the struggle for 
existence, that is, to the competition for the means of 
subsistence, to the struggle with enemies, to hostile 
environment, and to dangers of every kind. The 
adaptation thus brought about is of a purely " passive " 
kind. The variations arise fortuitously out of the 
organism, and present themselves for selection in the 
struggle for existence ; they are not actively acquired by 
means of the struggle. The secondary factors of evolu- 
tion recognised are : correlation in the growth and in 
the development of parts, the origin of new characters 
through use, their disappearance through disuse 
(Lamarck), the transmission of characters thus acquired, 
the influence of environment and sexual selection.* 

The Darwinian theory, the interpretation of the teleo- 
logical in the animate world by means of the theory of 
descent based upon natural selection, entered like a 
ferment into the scientific thought-movement, and in 
a space of forty years it has itself passed through a series 
of stages, differentiations, and transformations which 
have in part resulted in the present state of the theory, 
and have in part anticipated it. These are represented 

* Some of these subsidiary factors are difficult to harmonise with 
the main principle of selection ; they endanger it or it endangers 
them, as we shall see when we consider the controversies within the 
Darwinian camp. 



94 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

by the names of workers belonging to a generation which 
has for the most part already passed away : Darwin's 
collaborateurs, such as Alfred Russel Wallace, who inde- 
pendently and simultaneously expounded the theory of 
natural selection, Haeckel and Fritz MUller, Nageli and 
Askenasy, von Kolliker, Mivart, Romanes and others. 
The differentiation and elaboration of Darwin's theories 
has gone ever farther and farther ; the grades and 
shades of doctrine held by his disciples are now almost 
beyond reckoning. 

Various Forms of Darwinism 

The great majority of these express what may be 
called popular Darwinism [" Darwinismus vulgaris 
theoretically worthless, but practically possessed of 
great powers of attraction and propagandism. It 
expresses in the main a conviction, usually left 
unexplained, that everything " happens naturally," that 
man is really descended from monkeys, and that life has 
" evolved from lower stages " of itself, that dualism is 
wrong, and that monism is the truth. It is exactly the 
standpoint of the popular naturalism we have already 
described, which here mingles unsuspectingly and with- 
out scruple Lamarckian and other principles with the 
Darwinian, which is enthusiastic on the one hand over 
the " purely mechanical " interpretation of nature, and on 
the other drags in directly psychical motives, unconscious 
consciousness, impulses, spontaneous self-differentiation 
of organisms, which nevertheless adheres to " monism " 



VARIOUS FORMS OF DARWINISM 95 



and possibly even professes to share Goethe's conception 
of nature ! 

Above this stratum we come to that of the real 
experts, the only one which concerns us in the least. 
Here too we find an ever-growing distance between 
divergent views, the most manifold differences amounting 
sometimes to mutual exclusion. These differences occur 
even with reference to the fundamental doctrine generally 
adhered to, the doctrine of descent. To one party it is 
a proved fact, to another a probable, scientific working 
hypothesis, to a third a " rescuing plank." One party 
is always finding fresh corroborations, another new 
difficulties. And within the same group we find the 
contrasts of believers in monophyletic and believers in 
polyphyletic evolution, the mechanists and the half- 
confessed or thoroughgoing vitalists, the preformation- 
ists and the believers in epigenesis. Opinions differ 
even more widely in regard to the role of the " struggle 
for existence " in the production of species. On the one 
hand we have the Darwinism of Darwin freed from 
inconsequent additions and formulated as orthodox 
" neo-Darwinism " ; on the other hand we have heterodox 
Lamarckism. The " all-sufficiency " of natural selection 
is proclaimed by some, its impotence by others. Inde- 
finite variation is opposed by orthogenesis, fluctuating 
variation by saltatory mutation (Halmatogenesis in 
" Greek passive adaptation by the spontaneous 
activity and self-regulation of the living organism. 
The struggle for existence is variously regarded as the 



96 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



chief factor, or as a co-operating factor, or as an 
indifferent, or even an inimical factor in the origination 
of new species. 

And among the representatives of these different 
standpoints there are most interesting personal differ- 
ences : in some, like Weismann, we find a great loyalty 
to, and persistence in the position once arrived at, in 
others the most surprising transitions and changes of 
opinion. Thus Fleischmann, a pupil of Selenka's, after 
illustrating during many years of personal research 
the orthodox Darwinian standpoint, finally developed 
into an outspoken opponent not only of the theory of 
selection but of the doctrine of descent. So also Fried- 
mann.* Driesch started from the mechanical theory 
of life and advanced through the connected series of his 
own biological essays to vitalism. Romanes, a pro- 
minent disciple of Darwin, ended in Christian theism, 
and Wallace, the discoverer of " the struggle for exist- 
ence, 11 landed in spiritualism. 

Nothing like an exhaustive view of the present state 
of Darwinism and its many champions can here be 
attempted. But it will be necessary to get to know 
what we may call its possibilities by a study of typical 
and leading examples. In the course of our study many 
of the problems to which the theory gives rise will 
reveal themselves, and their orientation will be possible. 

This task falls naturally into two subdivisions : (1) the 

* H. Friedmann, "Die Konvergenz der Organismen," Berlin, 
1904. 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 



97 



present state of the theory of Evolution and Descent, 
and how far the religious conception of the world is or is 
not affected by it ; (2) the truth as to the originative and 
directive factors of Evolution, especially as to " natural 
selection in the struggle for existence, " whether they are 
tenable and sufficient, and what attitude religion must 
take towards them. These two problems must be kept 
distinct throughout, and must be discussed in order. 
For the validity of what is characteristically Darwinism 
is in no way decided by proving descent and evolution, 
although it appears so in most popular expositions.* 

The Theory of Descent 
Again and again we hear and read, even in scientific 
circles and journals, that Darwinism breaks down at 
many points, that it is insufficient, and even that it 
has quite collapsed. Even the assurances of its most con- 
vinced champions are rather forced, and are somewhat 
suggestive of bills payable in the future.! But here 
again it is obvious that we must distinguish clearly 
between the Theory of Descent and Darwinism. Of the 
Theory of Descent it is by no means true that it has 
" broken down."" With a slight exaggeration, but on 

O DO » 

the whole with justice, Weismann has asserted that the 

* It is somewhat confusing that even "Weismann in his most recent 
work professes to give " Lectures on the Theory of Descent." and in 
reality only assumes it, concerning himself with the Darwinian theory 
in the strict sense. The English translation is more correctly 
entitled " The Evolution Theory." 

t Qf. Wagner, " Zur gegenwartigen Laje des Darwinismus. " 
" Die Umschau," January, 1900. 

G 



98 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Theory of Descent is to-day a "generally accepted 
truth." Even Weismann's most pronounced opponents, 
such as Eimer, Wolff, Reinke, and others, are at one 
with him in this, that there has been evolution in some 
form ; that there has been a progressive transformation 
of species ; that there is real (not merely ideal) relation- 
ship or affiliation connecting our modern forms of life, 
up to and including man, with the lower and lowest 
forms of bygone aeons. 

The evidences are the same as those adduced by 
Darwin and before his time, but they have been multi- 
plied and more sharply defined: — namely, that the forms 
of life can be arranged in an ascending scale of evolu- 
tion, both in their morphological and their physiologi- 
cal aspects, both as regards the general type and the 
differentiation of individual organs and particular cha- 
racters, bodily and mental. All the rubrics used by 
Darwin in this connection, from comparative ana- 
tomy, from the palaeontological record itself, and so on, 
have been filled out with ever-increasing detail. Palae- 
ontology, in particular, is continually furnishing new 
illustrations of descent and new evidence of its proba- 
bility, more telling perhaps in respect of general features 
and particular groups than in regard to the historical 
process in detail. For certain species and genera 
palaeontology discloses the primitive forms, discovers 
" synthetic types " which were the starting-point for 
diverging branches of evolution, bridges over or narrows 
the yawning gulfs in evolution by the discovery of 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 



99 



" intermediate forms " ; and, in the case of certain 
species, furnishes complete genealogical trees. The 
same holds true of the facts of comparative anatomy, 
embryology, and so on. In all detailed investigations 
into an animal type, in the study of the structure, 
functions, or the instincts of an ant, or of a whale or of 
a tape-worm, the standpoint of the theory of descent 
is assumed, and it proves a useful clue for further 
investigation. 

In regard to man — so we are assured — the theorv 
finds confirmation through the discovery of the Neander- 
thal, Spy, Schipka, La Naulette skulls and bones — the 
remains of a prehistoric human race, with " pithecoid n 
(ape-like) characters. And the theory reaches its 
climax in Dubois' discovery of the remains of " Pithe- 
canthropus," the upright ape-man, in Java, 1891-92, 
the long sought-for Missing Link between animals and 
man ; * and in the still more recent proofs of " affinity 
of blood" between man and ape, furnished by ex- 
periments in transfusion. Friedenthal has revived the 
older experiments of transfusing the blood of one 
animal into another, the blood of an animal of one 
species into that of another, of related species into re- 
lated species, more remote into more remote, and finallv 
even from animals into man. The further apart the two 
species are, the more different are the physiological 

* Eugen Dubois (Military Surgeon of the Dutch Army). "Pithe- 
canthropus erectus, a man-like transition-form from Java."' Batavia. 
1904. 



Lore, 



100 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

characters of the blood, and the more difficult does a 
mingling of the two become. Blood of a too distantly 
related form does not unite with that of the animal 
into which it is transfused, but the red corpuscles of 
the former are destroyed by the serum of the latter, 
break up and are eliminated. In nearly related species 
or races, however, the two kinds of blood unite, as in 
the case of horse and ass, or of hare and rabbit. Human 
blood serum behaves in a hostile fashion to the blood 
of eel, pigeon, horse, dog, cat, and even to that of 
Lemuroids, or that of the more remotely related <; non- 
anthropoid " monkey ; human blood transfused from 
a negro into a white unites readily, as does also that 
of orang-utan transfused into a gibbon. But human 
blood also unites without any breaking-up or disturb- 
ance with the blood of a chimpanzee ; from which the 
inference is that man is not to be placed in a separate 
sub-order beside the other sub-orders of the Primates, 
the platyrrhine and catarrhine monkeys, not even in 
a distinct sub order beside the catarrhines ; but is to 
be included with them in one zoological sub-order. 
This classification was previously suggested by Selenka 
on other grounds, namely, because of the points in 
common in the embryonic development of the catarrhine 
monkeys and of man, and their common distinctiveness 
as contrasted with the platyrrhines.t 

f H. Friedenthal. " Ueber einen experimentellen Nachweis von 
Blutsverwandtschaft." Archiv. f. Anatomie und Physiologie, 1900, 
p. 494. 



HAECKEL'S EVOLUTIONIST POSITION 101 



Haeckel's Evolutionist Position 

The average type of the Theory of Descent of the 
older or orthodox school, which still lingers in the 
background with its Darwinism unshaken, is that set 
forth by Haeckel, scientifically in his "Generelle Mor- 
phologie der Organismen " (1866), and " S ystematische 
Phylogenie * (1896), and popularly in his " Natural 
History of Creation " and " Riddles of the Universe,'* 1 
with their many editions. We may assume that it is well 
known, and need only briefly recall its chief character- 
istics. The " inestimable value," the " incomparable 
significance," the " immeasurable importance " of the 
Theory of Descent lies, according to Haeckel, in the fact 
that by means of it we can explain the origin of the 
forms of life in a mechanical manner." The theory, 
especially in regard to the descent of man from the 
apes, is to him not a working hypothesis or tentative 
mode of representation ; it is a result comparable to 
Newton's law of gravitation or the Kant-Laplace cos- 
mogony. It is " a certain historical fact." The proofs 
of it are those already mentioned. 

What is especially Haeckelian is the "fundamental 
biogenetic law," " ontogeny resembles phylogeny," that 
is to say, in development, especially in embryonic 
development, the individual recapitulates the history 
of the race. Through " palingenesis," man, for instance, 
recapitulates his ancestral stages (protist, gastnead, 
vermine, piscine, and simian). This recapitulation is con- 



102 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



densed, disarranged, or obscured in detail by " ceno- 
genesis " or " caenogenesis." The groups and types of 
organisms exhibit the closest genetic solidarity. The 
genealogical tree of man in particular runs directly 
through a whole series. From the realm of the pro lists 
it leads to that of the gastraeadae (nowadays represented 
by the Ccelentera), thence into the domain of the 
worms, touches the hypothetical " primitive chordates " 
(for the necessary existence of which " certain proofs " 
can be given), the class of tunicates, ascends through 
the fishes, amphibians and reptiles to forms parallel to 
the modern monotremes, then directly through the 
marsupials to the placentals, through lemuroids and 
baboons to the anthropoid apes, from them to the 
" famous Pithecanthropus " discovered in Java, out of 
which homo sapiens arose. (The easy transition from 
one group of forms to another is to be noted. For it 
is against this point that most of the opposition has 
been directed, whether from "grumbling" critics, or 
thoroughgoing opponents of the Theory of Descent.) 

Haeckel's facile method of constructing genealogical 
trees, which ignores difficulties and discrepant facts, 
has met with much criticism and ridicule even among 
Darwinians. The " orator of Berlin," Du Bois-Reymond, 
declared that if he must read romances he would prefer 
to read them in some other form than that of genea- 
logical trees. But they have at least the merit that 
they give a vivid impression of what is most plausible 
and attractive in the idea of descent, and moreover 



WEISM ANN'S EVOLUTIONIST POSITION 103 



they have helped towards orientation in the discussion. 
Nor can we ignore the very marked taxonomic and 
architectonic talent which their construction displays. 

Weismann's Evolutionist Position 

The most characteristic representative, however; of 
the modern school of unified and purified Darwinism is 
not Haeckel, but the Freiburg zoologist, Weismann. 
Through a long series of writings he has carried on the 
conflict against heterodox, and especially Lamarckian 
theories of evolution, and has developed his theories of 
heredity and the causes of variation, of the non-trans- 
missibility of acquired characters, and the all-sufficiency 
of natural selection. In his latest great work, in two 
volumes, "Lectures on the Theory of Descent,"* he 
has definitely summed up and systematised his views. 
These will interest us when we come to inquire into 
the problem of the factors operative in evolution. 
For the moment we are only concerned with his attitude 
to the Theory of Descent as such. It is precisely the 
same as HaeckeFs, although he is opposed to Haeckel 
in regard to the strictly Darwinian standpoint. The 
Theory of Descent has conquered, and it may be said 
with assurance, for ever. That is the firm conviction 
on which the whole work is based, and it is really 
rather treated as a self-evident axiom than as a state- 
ment to be proved. Weismann takes little trouble to 

# Jena, 1904. Trans. " The Evolution Theory," Arnold. London. 
1904. 



104 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



prove it. All the well-known, usually very clear proofs 
from palaeontology, comparative anatomy, &c, which 
we are accustomed to meet with in evolutionist books are 
wanting here, the genealogical trees of the Equidae, with 
the gradually diminishing number of toes and the vary- 
ing teeth, of Planorbis multiformis, of the ammonites, 
the graduated series of stages exhibited by individual 
organs, for instance, from the ganglion merely sensitive 
to light up to the intricate eye, or from the rayed skeleton 
of the paired fins in fishes up to the five-fingered hands 
and feet of the higher vertebrates, &c. These are only 
briefly touched upon in the terse " Introduction, 11 and the 
whole of the comprehensive work is then directed to 
showing what factors can have been operative, and 
to proving that they must have been " Darwinian " 
(selection in the struggle for existence), and not 
Lamarckian or any other. This is shown in regard 
to the coloration of animals, the phenomena of 
mimicry, the protective arrangements of plants, the 
development of instinct in animals, and the origin of 
flowers. 

In reality Weismann only adduces one strict proof, 
and even that is only laying special stress on what is 
well known in comparative embryology ; namely, the 
possibility of " predicting " on the basis of the theory 
of descent, as Leverrier " predicted " Neptune. For in- 
stance, in the lower vertebrates from amphibians 
upwards there is an os centrale in the skeleton of wrist, 
but there is none in man. Now if man be descended 



WEISMANN'S EVOLUTIONIST POSITIOxN 105 



from lower vertebrates, and if the fundamental bio- 
genetic law be true (that every form of life recapitulates 
in its own development, especially in its embryonic 
development, the evolution of its race, though with 
abbreviations and condensations), it may be predicted 
that the os centrale is to be found in the early embry- 
onic stages of man. And Rosenberg found it. In the 
same way the " gill-clefts " of the fish-like ancestors 
have long since been discovered in the embryo of the 
higher vertebrates and of man. Weismann himself 
" predicted 11 that the markings of the youngest stage 
of the caterpillars of the Sphingidae (hawk-moths) 
would be found to be not oblique but longitudinal 
stripes, and ten years later a fortunate observation 
verified the prediction. Because of the abundance of 
evidential facts Weismann does not go into any detailed 
proof of evolution. " One can hardly take up any 
work, large or small, on the finer or more general 
structural relations, or on the development of any 
animal, without finding in it proofs for the evolution 
theory." 

But assured as the doctrine of descent appears,* and 
certain as it is that it has not only maintained its hold 
since Darwin's day, but has strengthened it and has 
gained adherents, this foundation of Darwinism is 

* A defence of this very confident Darwinian point of view, for 
the benefit of non-scientific readers, will be found in the recent " Ge- 
rneinverstandlichen darwinistischen Vortragen und Abhandlungen," 
by Plate, Simroth, Schmidt, and others. See also Ziegler's " Ueber 
den derzeitigen Stand der Descendenzlehre in der Zoologie." 



106 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

nevertheless not the unanimous and inevitable conclu- 
sion of all scientific men in the sense and to the extent 
that the utterances of Weismann and others would lead 
us to suppose. Apart from all apologetic attempts 
either in religious, ethical, or aesthetic interests, apart, 
too, from the superior standpoint of the philosophers, 
who have not, so to speak, taken the theory very seriously, 
but regard it as a provisional theory, as a more or less 
necessary and useful method of grouping our ideas in 
regard to the organic world, there are even among 
the biologists themselves some who, indifferent towards 
religious or philosophical or naturalistic dogma, hold 
strictly to fact, and renounce with nonchalance any 
pretensions at completeness of knowledge if the data 
do not admit of it, and on these grounds hold them- 
selves aloof from evolutionist generalisation. From 
among these come the counsels of " caution," admissions 
that the theory is a scientific hypothesis and a guide to 
research, but not knowledge, and confessions that the 
Theory of Descent as a whole is verifiable rather as a 
general impression than in detail. 

Virchow's Position 

Warnings of this kind have come occasionally from 
Du Bois-Reymond, but the true type of this group, and 
its mode of thought, is Virchow. It will repay us and 
suffice us to make acquaintance with it through him. 
His opposition to Darwinism and the theory of 
descent was directed at its most salient point : the 



VIRCHOW'S POSITION 



107 



descent of man from the apes. In lectures and 
treatises, at zoological and anthropological congresses, 
especially at the meetings of his own Anthropological- 
Ethnological Society in Berlin, from his " Vortrage liber 
Menschen-und Affen-Schadel " (Lectures on the Skulls 
of Man and Apes, 1869), to the disputes over Dubois r 
Pithecanthropus erectus in the middle of the nineties, he 
threw the whole weight of his immense learning — 
ethnological and anthropological, osteological, and 
above all " craniological " — into the scale against the 
Theory of Descent and its supporters. Virchow has 
therefore been reckoned often enough among the anti- 
Darwinians, and has been quoted by apologists and 
others as against Darwinism, and he has given reason 
for this, since he has often taken the field against " the 
Darwinists " or has scoffed at their " longing for a 
pro-anthropos.'' , * Sometimes even it has been suggested 
that he was actuated by religious motives, as when 
he occasionally championed not only freedom for 
science, but, incidentally, the right of existence for " the 
churches," leaving, for instance, in his theory of psychical 
life, gaps in knowledge which faith might occupy in 
moderation and modesty. But this last proves nothing. 
With Virchow's altogether unemotional nature it is 
unlikely that religious or spiritual motives had any role 
in the establishment of his convictions, and in HaeckeFs 
na'ive blustering at religion, there is, so to speak, more 

* " Kassenbildung und Erblichkeit," Festschrift fur Bastian, 
- p. 9. 



108 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



religion than in the cold-blooded connivance with which 
Virchow leaves a few openings in otherwise frozen 
ponds for the ducks of faith to swim in ! And he has 
nothing of the pathos of Du Bois-Reymond's "igno- 
rabunus." He is the neutral, prosaic scientist, who will 
let nothing " tempt him to a transcendental considera- 
tion," * either theological or naturalistic, who holds 
tenaciously to matters of fact, who, without absolutely 
rejecting a general theory, will not concern himself 
about it, except to point out every difficulty in the way 
of it ; in short, he is the representative of a mood that 
is the ideal of every investigator and the despair of 
every theoriser. 

His lecture of 1869 already indicates his subsequent 
attitude. "Considered logically and speculatively" 
the Theory of Descent seems to him "excellent,"! indeed 
a logical moral (!) hypothesis, but unproved in itself, and 
erroneous in many of its particular propositions. As far 
back as 1858, before the publication of Darwin's great 
work, he stated at the Naturalists 1 Congress in Carls- 
ruhe, that the origin of one species out of another 

appeared to him a necessary scientific inference, but 

And throughout the whole lecture he alternates between 
favourable recognition of the theory in general, and 
emphasis of the difficulties which confront it in detail. 
The skull, which, according to Goethe's theory, has 

* " Rassenbildung und Erblichkeit," Festschrift fur Bastian, p. 6. 

t " Sammlung gemeinverstandl. Vortrage, hrsg. v. Virchow und 
Holtzendorf, " Heft 96. " Menschen- und Affenschadel," Berlin, 
1870. 



VIRCHOWS POSITION 109 

evolved from three modified vertebrae, is fundamentally 
different in man and monkeys, both in regard to its 
externals, crests, ridges and shape, and especially in 
regard to the nature of the cavity which it forms for 
the brain. Specifically distinctive differences in the 
development and structure of the rest of the body must 
also be taken into account. The so-called ape-like 
structures in the skull and the rest of the body, which 
occasionally occur in man (idiots, microcephaloids, &c.) 
cannot be regarded as atavisms and therefore as proofs 
of the Theory of Descent ; they are of a pathological 
nature, entirely facts sui generis, and " not to be placed 
in a series with the normal results of evolution." A 
man modified by disease " is still thoroughly a man, 
not a monkey." 

Virchow continued to maintain this attitude and 
persisted in this kind of argument. He energetically 
rejected all attempts to find "pithecoid " characters in 
the prehistoric remains of man. He declared the 
narrow and less arched forehead, the elliptical form, and 
the unusually large frontal cavities of the " Neanderthal 
skull " found in the Wupperthal in 1856, to be simply 
pathological features, which occur as such in certain 
examples of homo sapiens/* He explained the abnormal 
appearance of the jaw from the Moravian cave of 
Schipka as a result of the retention of teeth, f accom- 
panied by directly " antipithecoid " characters. 

* " Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie," 1882, p. 276. 

f "Verb. Berlin anthropolog. GesellschaEt iv." (1872), p. 132. It 



110 



NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



The proceedings at the meetings of the Ethnological 
Society in 1895, at which Dubois was present, had an 
almost dramatic character.* In the diverse opinions 
of Dubois, Virchow, Nehring, Kollmann, Krause and 
others, we have almost an epitome of the present state 
of the Darwinian question. Virchow doubted whether 
the parts put together by Dubois (the head of a femur, 
two molar teeth, and the top of a skull) belonged to 
the same individual at all, disputed the calculations as 
to the large capacity of the skull, placed against 
Dubois 1 very striking and clever drawing of the curves 
of the skull-outline, which illustrated, with the help of 
the Pithecanthropus, the gradual transition from the 
skull of a monkey to that of man, his own drawing, 
according to which the Pithecanthropus curve simply 
coincides with that of a gibbon {Hylobates), and 
asserted that the remains discovered were those of a 
species of gibbon, refusing even to admit that they 
represented a new genus of monkeys. He held fast to 
his ceterum censeo : " As yet no diluvial discovery has 
been made which can be referred to a man of a pithe- 
coid type." Indeed, his polemic or " caution " in regard 
to the Theory of Descent went even further. He 
not only refused to admit the proof of the descent of 
man from monkey, he would not even allow that the 
descent of one race from another has been demon- 
does, however, appear strange to the lay mind that it should have 
been only the pathological subjects of prehistoric times that had 
their remains preserved for our modern study. 

* Cf. " Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie," 1895, pp. 78, 735. 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 111 

strated.* In spite of all the plausible hypotheses it 
remains " so far only a plum desiderium." The race 
obstinately maintains its specific distinctness, and resists 
variation; or gradual transformation into another. The 
negro remains a negro in America, and the European 
colonist of Australia remains a European. 

Yet all Yirchows opposition may be summed 
up in the characteristic words, which might almost 
be called his motto, " I warn you of the need for 
caution," and it is not a seriously-meant rejection 
of the Theory of Descent. In reality he holds the 
evolution-idea as au axiom, and in the last-named 
treatise he shows distinctly how lie conceives of the 
process. He starts with variation (presumably " kalei- 
doscopic "), which comes about as a " pathological " 
phenomenon, that is to say. not spontaneously, but as 
the result of environmental stimulus, as the organism's 
reaction to climatic and other conditions of life. The 
result is an alteration of previous characteristics, and a 
new stable race is established by an 64 acquired 
anomaly.*" - 

Other Instances of Dissatisfaction with the 

Theoey of Descent. 

What was with Virchow only a suggestion of the 

* Of. i! Eassenbildung und Erblichkeit." Festschrift fur Bastian. 
1895. 

f See also " Descendenz und Pathologie." Arch. f. path. Anat. 
u. Physiol., 1886; "Transformation und Abstammung/' Berliner 
Klin. Wochenschrift. 1893. 



112 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

need for caution, or controversial matter to be subse- 
quently allowed for or contradicted, had more serious 
consequences to others, and led to still greater hesitancy 
as regards evolutionist generalisations and speculations, 
and sometimes to sharp antagonism to them. 

One of the best known of the earlier examples of this 
mood is Kerner von Marilaun's large and beautiful work 
on " Plant Life." * He does, indeed, admit that our 
species are variations of antecedent forms, but only in 
a very limited sense. Within the stocks or grades of 
organisation which have always existed, variations have 
come about, through " hybridisation, - ' 1 through the 
crossing of similar, but relatively different forms ; these 
variations alter the configuration and appearance in 
detail, but neither affect the general character nor 
cause any transition from " lower " to " higher." 

Kerner disposes of the chief argument in favour of 
the theory of descent, the homology of individual 
organs, by explaining that the homology is due to the 
similarity of function in the different organisms. 
A similar argument is used in regard to " ontogeny 
recapitulating phytogeny." Palaeontology does not 
disclose in the plant-world any " synthetic types," 
which might have been the common primitive stock 
from which many now divergent branches have sprung, 
nor does it disclose any " transition links" really inter- 

* First edition, Leipzig, 1887- A second edition and an English 
translation have since been published. See especially the discussion 
of the origin and history of species in the second volume. 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 113 

mediate, for instance, between cryptogams and gymno- 
sperms, or between gymnosperms and angiosperms. 
That the higher races are apparently absent from the 
earlier strata is not a proof that they have never 
existed. The peat-bog flora must have involved the 
existence of a large companion-flora, without which the 
peat could not have been formed, but all trace of 
this is absent in the still persistent vestiges of these 
times.* Life, with energy and matter, has existed as 
a phenomenon of the universe from all eternity, and 
thus its chief forms and manifestations have not 
" arisen," but have always been. If facts such as these 
contradict the Kant-Laplace theory of the universe, 
then the latter must be corrected in the light of them, 
not conversely. The extreme isolation of Kerner and 
his theory is probably due especially to this corollary of 
his views. 

Among the most recent examples of antagonism to 
the Evolution-Theory, the most interesting is a book 
by Fleischmann, professor of zoology in Erlangen, 
published in 1901, and entitled, "The Theory of 
Descent." It consists of 44 popular lectures on the rise 
and decline of a scientific hypothesis " (namely, the 
Theory of Descent), and it is a complete recantation by 
a quondam Darwinian of the doctrine of his school, 
even of its fundamental proposition, the concept of 
evolution itself. For Fleischmann is not guilty, like 
Weismann, of the inaccuracy of using 44 Theory of 

* See English translation of Kerner's " Plant Life." 

H 



114 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

Descent " as equivalent to Darwinism ; he is absolutely 
indifferent to the theory of natural selection. His 
book keeps strictly to matters of fact, and rejects as 
speculation everything in the least beyond these ; it does 
not express even an opinion on the question of the 
origin of species, but merely criticises and analyses. 

It does not bring forward any new and overwhelming 
arguments in refutation of the Theory of Descent, but 
strongly emphasises difficulties that have always beset 
it, and discusses these in detail. The old dispute which 
interested Goethe, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and Cuvier, as 
to the unity or the fundamental heterogeneity of the 
" architectural plan " in nature is revived. Modern 
zoology recognises not merely the four types of Cuvier, 
but seventeen different styles, " phyla," or groups of 
forms, to derive one of which from another is hopeless. 
And what is true of the whole is true also of the sub- 
divisions within each phylum ; e.g., within the verte- 
brate phylum with its fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds 
and mammals. No bridge leads from one to the other. 
This is proved particularly by the very instance which 
is the favourite illustration in support of the Theory of 
Descent — the fin of fishes and its relation to the five- 
fingered hand of vertebrates. The so-called transition 
forms (Archaeopteryx, monotremes, &c.) are discredited. 
So with the "stalking-horse" of evolutionists— the 
genealogical tree of the Equidae, which is said to be 
traceable palaeontologically right back, without a 
break, from the one-toed horses of the present day to 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 



115 



the normal five-toed ancestry ; and so with another 
favourite instance of evolution, the history of the pond- 
snails (Planorbis multiformis), the numerous varieties 
of which occur with transitions between them in actual 
contiguity in the Steinheim beds, and thus seem to afford 
an obvious example of the transformation of species. 
Against these cases, and against using the palseon- 
tological archives as a basis for the construction of 
genealogical trees in general, the weighty and appa- 
rently decisive objection is urged, that nowhere are the 
soft parts of the earlier forms of life preserved, and that 
it is impossible to establish relationships with any 
certainty on the basis of hard parts only, such as bones, 
teeth and shells. Even Haeckel admits that snails of 
very different bodily structure may form very similar 
and even hardly distinguishable shells. 

Fleischmann further asserts that Haeckel's "funda- 
mental biogenetic law * has utterly collapsed. u He- 
capitulation " does not occur. Selenka's figures of ovum- 
segmentation show that there are specific differences in 
the individual groups. The origin and development 
of the blastoderm or germinal disc has nothing to do 
with recapitulation of the phylogeny. It is not the 
case that the embryos of higher vertebrates are indis- 
tinguishable from one another. Even the egg-cell has 
a specific character, and is totally different from any 
unicellular organism at the Protistan level. The 
much-cited "gill-clefts" of higher vertebrates in the 
embryonic stage are not persistent reminiscences of 



116 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



earlier lower stages ; they are rudiments or primordia 
shared by all vertebrates, and developing differently at 
the different levels ; (thus in fishes they become breath- 
ing organs, and in the higher vertebrates they become 
in part associated with the organs of hearing, or in 
part disappear again). 

Though Fleischmann's vigorous protest against over- 
hastiness in construction and over-confidence on the 
part of the adherents of the doctrine of descent is very 
interesting, and may often be justified in detail, it is 
difficult to resist the impression that the wheat has 
been rejected with the chaff.* 

Even a layman may raise the following objections : 
Admitting that the great groups of forms cannot be 
traced back to one another, the palaeontological record 
still proves, though it may be only in general outline, 
that within each phylum there has been a gradual suc- 
cession and ascent of forms. How is the origin of 
what is new to be accounted for ? Without doing 
violence to our thinking, without a sort of intellectual 
autonomy, we cannot rest content with the mere fact that 
new elements occur. So, in spite of all " difficulties," 
the assumption of an actual descent quietly forces 
itself upon us as the only satisfactory clue. And the 
fact, which Fleischmann does not discuss, that even at 
present we may observe the establishment of what are 
at least new breeds, impels us to accept an analogous 

* Cf. a criticism of the book from the Darwinian point of view by 
Plate- in Biologisches Centralblatt, 1901. 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT J 17 



origin of new species. Even if the biogenetic law 
really " finds its chief confirmation in its exceptions," 
even if we cannot speak of a strict recapitulation of 
earlier stages of evolution, there are indisputable facts 
which are most readily interpreted as reminiscences, as 
due to affiliation (ideal or hereditary), with ancestral 
forms. (Note, for instance, Weismann's " prediction, 11 
&c.*) Even if Archseopteryx and other intermediate 
forms cannot be regarded as connecting links in the 
strict sense, i.e., as being stages in the actual pedigree, 
yet the occurrence of reptilian and avian peculiarities 
side by side in one organism, goes far to prove the close 
relationship of the two classes. 

Fleischmann's book strengthens the impression gained 
elsewhere, that a general survey of the domain of 
life as a whole gives force and convincingness to the 
Theory of Descent, while a study of details often 
results in breaking the threads and bringing the diffi- 
culties into prominence. But the same holds true of 
many other theoretical constructions, and yet we do not 
seriously doubt their validity. (Take, for instance, the 
Kant-Laplace theory, and theories of ethnology, of the 
history of religion, of the history of language, and so 
on.) And it is quite commonly to be observed that 
those who have an expert and specialist knowledge, who 
are aware of the refractoriness of detailed facts, often 
take up a sceptical attitude towards every comprehen- 

* That this points only to the fact of evolution, and not neces- 
sarily to actual descent, will be seen later on. 



118 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



sive theory, though the ultimate use of detailed inves- 
tigation is to make the construction of general theories 
possible. Fleischmann does exactly what, say, an 
anthropologist would do if, under the impression of the 
constancy and distinctiveness of the human races, which 
would become stronger the more deeply he penetrated, 
he should resignedly renounce all possibility of affiliating 
them, and should rest content with the facts as he 
found them. Similarly, those who are most intimately 
acquainted with the races of domesticated animals 
often resist most strenuously all attempts, although 
these seem to others a matter of course, to derive our 
" tame " forms from " wild" species living in freedom. 

But to return. Even where the Theory of Descent 
is recognised, whether fully or only half-heartedly, the 
recognition does not always mean the same thing. 
Even the adherents of the general, but in itself quite 
vague view that a transformation from lower forms to 
higher, and from similar to different forms, has taken 
place, may present so many points of disagreement, 
and may even stand in such antagonism to one 
another, that onlookers are apt to receive the impression 
that they occupy quite different standpoints, and are no 
longer at one even in the fundamentals of their 
hypotheses. 

The most diverse questions and answers crop up ; 
whether evolution has been brought about " monophy- 
letically" or " polyphyletically," i.<?., through one or 
many genealogical trees ; whether it has taken place in 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 



119 



a continuous easy transition from one type to another, 
or by leaps and bounds ; whether through a gradual 
transformation of all organs, each varying individually, 
or through correlated " kaleidoscopic " variations of 
many kinds throughout the whole system ; whether it 
is essentially asymptotic, or whether organisms pass 
from " labile ;i phases of vital equilibrium by various 
halting-places to stable states, which are definitive, and 
are, so to speak, the blind alleys and terminal points of 
evolutionary possibilities, e.g., the extinct gigantic 
saurians, and perhaps also man. And to these problems 
must be added the various answers to the question, 
What precedes, or may have preceded, the earliest 
stages of life of which we know ? Whence came the first 
cell ? Whence the first living protoplasm ? and How 
did the living arise from the inorganic ? These deeper 
questions will occupy us in our chapter on the theory 
of life. Some of the former, in certain of their aspects, 
will be considered in the sixth chapter, which deals 
with factors in evolution. 

The Theory of Descent itself and the differences that 
obtain even among its adherents can best be studied by 
considering for a little the works of Reinke and of 
Hamann. 

Reinke, Professor of Botany in Kiel, has set forth his 
views in his book. "'Die Welt als Tat,"* and more 
recently in his 44 Einleitung in die theoretische 
Biologie " (1901). Both books are addressed to a wide 
* First edition, 1899 ; now in a second edition. 



120 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



circle of readers. Reinke and Hamann both revive 
some of the arguments and opinions set forth in the 
early days of Darwinism by Wigand,* an author whose 
works are gradually gaining increased appreciation. 

It is Reinke's " unalterable conviction " that organisms 
have evolved, and that they have done so after the 
manner of fan-shaped genealogical trees. The Theory 
of Descent is to him an axiom of modern biology, though 
as a matter of fact the circumstantial evidence in favour 
of it is extremely fragmentary. The main arguments in 
favour of it appear to him to be the general ones ; the 
homologies and analogies revealed by comparative 
morphology and physiology, the ascending series in 
the palaeontological record, vestigial organs, parasitic 
degeneration, the origin of those vital associations which 
we call consortism and symbiosis. These he illustrates 
mainly by examples from his own special domain and 
personal observation. 

The simplest unicellular forms of life are to be 
thought of as at the beginning of evolution ; and, since 
mechanical causes cannot explain their ascent, it must be 
assumed that they have an inherent " phylogenetic poten- 
tial of development," 1 which, working epigenetically, 
results in ascending evolution. He leaves us to choose 
between monophyletic and polyphyletic evolution, but 
himself inclines towards the latter, associating with it a 

* "Genealo^ie der TJrzellen als Losung des Descendenzproblems " 
(1872), and "Der Darwinismus und die Naturforschung Newtons 
und Cuviers" (1874-1877). 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 121 



rehabilitation of Wigand's theory of the primitive cells. 
If, in the beginning, primitive forms of life arose (pro- 
bably as unicellulars) from the not-living, it is not 
obvious why we need think of only one so arising, and, 
if many did so, why they should not have inherent 
differences which would at once result in typically 
different evolutionary series and groups of forms. But 
evolution does not go on ad libitum or ad infinitum, for 
the capacity for differentiation and transformation 
gradually diminishes. The organisation passes from a 
labile state of equilibrium to an increasingly stable state, 
and at many points it may reach a terminus where it 
comes to a standstill. Man, the dog, the horse, the 
cereals, and fruit trees appear to Reinke to have reached 
their goal. The preliminary stages he calls " Phyl- 
embryos, 11 because they bear to the possible outcome of 
their evolution the same relation that the embryo does 
to the perfect individual. Thus, Phenacodus may be 
regarded as the Phylembryo of the modern horse. It is 
quite conceivable that each of our modern species may 
have had an independent series of Phylembryos reaching 
back to the primitive cells. But the palaeontological 
record, and especially its synthetic types, lead Reinke 
rather to assume that instead of innumerable series, 
there have been branching genealogical trees, not one, 
however, but several. 

These views, together or separately, which are cha- 
racterised chiefly by the catch-words " polyphyletic 
descent, 11 " labile and stable equilibrium, 11 and so on, crop 



122 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



up together or separately in the writings of various 
evolutionists belonging to the opposition wing. They 
are usually associated with a denial of the theory of 
natural selection, and with theories of 44 Orthogenesis," 
44 Heterogenesis," and 44 Epigenesis." 

We shall discuss them later when we are considering 
the factors in evolution. But we must first take notice 
of a work in which the theories opposed to Darwinian 
orthodoxy have been most decisively and aggressively 
set forth. As far back as 1892 O. Hamann, then a 
lecturer on zoology in Gottingen, gathered these 
together and brought them into the field, against 
Haeckel in particular, in his book 4< Entwicklungslehre 
und Darwinismus." * 

Hamann's main theme is that Darwinism overlooks 
the fact that 44 there cannot have been an origin of 
higher types from types already finished." Eor this 
44 unfortunate and unsupported assumption " there are 
no proofs in embryology, palaeontology, or anatomy. 
He adopts and expands the arguments and anti-Haeck- 
elian deliverances of His in embryology, of Snell and 
Heer in palaeontology, of Kolliker and von Baer in 
their special interpretation of evolution, of Snell par- 
ticularly as regards the descent of man. It is impos- 
sible to derive Metazoa from Protozoa in their present 
finished state of evolution ; even the Amoeba is so 
exactly adapted in organisation and functional activity 

* " Eine kritische Darstellung der modernen Entwicklungslehre," 
Jena, 1892. 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 123 



to the conditions of its existence that it is a " finished " 
type. It is only by a stretch of fancy that fishes can 
be derived from worms, or higher vertebrates from 
fishes. One of his favourite arguments — and it is a 
weighty one, though neglected by the orthodox Dar- 
winians — is that living substance is capable, under 
similar stimuli, of developing spontaneously and afresh, 
at quite different points and in different groups, similar 
organs, such as spots sensitive to light, accumulations 
of pigment, eye- spots, lenses, complete eyes, and 
similarly with the notochord, the excretory organs, and 
the like. Therefore homology of organs is no proof of 
their hereditary affiliation.* They rather illustrate 
" iterative evolution." 

Another favourite argument is the fact of " Pedo- 
genesis. 11 Certain animals, such as Amphiojcus lance- 
olatus, Peripatus, and certain Medusae, are very fre- 
quently brought forward as examples of persistent 
primitive stages and " transitional connecting links." 
But considered from the point of view of Pedogenesis, 
they all assume quite a different aspect, and seem rather 
to represent very highly evolved species, and to be, 
not primitive forms, but conservative and regressive 
forms. Pedogenesis is the phenomenon exhibited 
by a number of species, which may stop short at 
one of the stages of their embryonic or larval 
development, become sexually mature, and produce 

* Compare Darwin's derivation of fishes from Tunicata because of 
the notochord which occurs in the tunicate larva?. 



124 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



offspring without having attained their own fully 
developed form. 

Another argument is the old, suggestive, and really 
important one urged by Kolliker, that inorganic 
nature shows a natural system among minerals (crystals) 
just as much as animals and plants do, yet in the former 
there can be no question of any genetic connection in 
the production of forms." 

Yet another argument is found in the occurrence of 
" inversions " and anomalies in the palaeontological suc- 
cession of forms, which to some extent upsets the Dar- 
winian-Haeckelian genealogical trees. (Thus there are 
forms in the Cambrian whose alleged ancestors do not 
appear till the Silurian. Foraminifera and other 
Protozoa do not appear till the Silurian.) 

From embryology in particular, as elsewhere in 
general, we read the 44 fundamental biogenetic law," that 
evolution is from the general to the special, from the 
imperfect to the more perfect, from what is still indefinite 
and exuberant to the well-defined and precise, but never 
from the special to the special. According to Hamann's 
hypothesis we must think of evolution as going on, so 
to speak, not about the top but about the bottom. The 
phyla or groups of forms are great trunks bearing many 
branches and twigs, but not giving rise to one another. 
Still less do the little side branches of one trunk bear 
the whole great trunk of another animal or plant 
phylum. But they all grow from the same roots among 
the primitive forms of life. Unicellulars these must 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 125 



have been, but not like our " Protists." They should 
be thought of as primitive forms having within them- 
selves the potentialities of the most diverse and widely 
separate evolution-series to which they gave rise, as it 
were, along diverging fan-like rays. 

It would be instructive to follow some naturalist into 
his own particular domain, for instance a palaeontologist 
into the detailed facts of palaeontology, or an embryo- 
logist into those of embryology, in order to learn 
whether these corroborate the assumptions of the 
Theory of Descent or not. It is just in relation to 
these detailed facts that criticisms or even denials of 
the theory have been most frequent. Koken, otherwise 
a convinced supporter of the theory, inquires in his 
" Vorwelt," apropos of the tortoises, what has become 
of the genealogical trees that were scattered abroad in 
the world as proved facts in the early days of Darwinism. 
He asserts, in regard to Archasopteryx, the instance 
which is always put forward as the intermediate link in 
the evolution of birds, that it does not show in any of 
its characters a fundamental difference from any of the 
birds of to-day, and further, that, through convergent 
development under similar influences, similar organs and 
structural relations result, iterative arrangements which 
come about quite independently of descent. He main- 
tains, too, that the principle of the struggle for 
existence is rather disproved than corroborated by the 
palaeontological record. 

In embryology, so competent an authority as 



126 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



O. Hertwig — himself a former pupil of Haeckel's — has 
reacted from the " fundamental biogenetic law." His 
theory of the matter is very much that of Hamann 
which we have already discussed ; development is not 
so much a recapitulation of finished ancestral types as 
the laying down of foundations after the pattern of 
generalised simple forms, not yet specialised ; and from 
these foundations the special organs rise to different 
levels and grades of differentiation according to the 
type.* But we must not lose ourselves in details. 

Looking back over the whole field once more, we feel 
that we are justified in maintaining with some confidence 
that the different pronouncements in regard to the 
detailed application and particular features of the 
Theory of Descent, and the different standpoints that 
are occupied even by evolutionists, are at least suffi- 
cient to make it obvious that, even if evolution and 
descent have actually taken place, they have not run so 
simple and smooth a course as the over-confident would 
have us believe; that the Theory of Descent rather 
emphasises than clears away the riddles and difficulties 
of the case, and that with the mere corroboration of 
the theory we shall have gained only something rela- 
tively external, a clue to creation, which does not so 
much solve its problems as restate them. The whole 
criticism of the "right wing," from captious objections 
to actual denials, proves this indisputably. And it 
seems likely that in the course of time a sharpening of 
* See Hertwig's " Biological Problem of To-day." London 1896. 



THE THEORY OF DESCENT 



127 



the critical insight and temper will give rise to further 
reactions from the academic theory as we have come to 
know it.* On the other hand, it may be assumed with 
even greater certainty that the general evolutionist 
point of view and the great arguments for descent in 
some form or other will ultimately be victorious if they 
are not so already, and that, sooner or later, we shall 
take the Theory of Descent in its most general form as 
a matter of course, just as we now do the Kant-Laplace 
theory. 

* The justice of this prophecy has been meanwhile illustrated by 
the recent work of H. Friedmann. " Die Konvergenz der Organ- 
ismen." Berlin, 1904. 



CHAPTER V 



RELIGION AND THE THEORY OF DESCENT 

In seeking to define our position in regard to the theory 
of descent it is most important that we should recog- 
nise that, when it is looked into closely, the true problem 
at issue is not a special zoological one, but is quite 
general, and also that it is not a new growth which has 
sprung up suddenly and found us unprepared, but that 
it is very ancient and has long existed in our midst. 
In the whole theory the question of " descent " is after 
all a mere accessory. Even if it fell through and were 
seen to be scientifically undemonstrable, " evolution in 
the realm of life " would remain an indisputable fact, and 
with it there would arise precisely the same difficulties 
for the religious interpretation of the world which are 
usually attributed to the Theory of Descent. 

Evolution or development has been a prominent idea 
in the history of thought since the time of Aristotle, 
but descent is. so to speak, a modern upstart. According 
to long-established modes of thought, to evolve means 
to pass from dvvajuet to Ivepytla etvai, from potentia to 
actus, from the existence of the rudiment as in the seed 
to full realisation as in the tree. In the course of its 



RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 129 

development the organism passes through many succes- 
sive phases, which are related to one another like steps, 
each rising directly from the one beneath, and preparing 
for the one above. Thus all nature, and especially the 
realm of life, implies a ladder of " evolution." What is 
" potentially " inherent in the lowest form of life has in 
the highest, as in man, become actual or " realised " 
through a continuous sequence of phases, successively 
more and more evolved. This view in its earlier forms 
was very far from implying that each higher step was 
literally " descended " from the one below it, through 
the physical and mental transformation of some of its 
representatives. As the world, in Aristotle's view for 
instance, had existed from all eternity, so also had the 
stages and forms of life, each giving rise again to its 
like. Indeed, the essential idea was that each higher 
step is simply a development, a fuller unfolding of the 
lower stage, and finally that man was the complete 
realisation of what was potentially inherent in the 
lowest of all. 

This doctrine of evolution was in modern times the 
fundamental idea of Leibnitz and Kant, of Goethe, 
Schelling and Hegel. It brought unity and connected- 
ness into the system of nature, united everything by 
steps, denied the existence of gaping chasms, and 
proclaimed the solidarity of all the forms of life. 
But to all this the idea of actual descent was unneces- 
sary. An actual material variation and transition from 

one stage to another seemed to it a wooden and gross 

i 



130 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



expression of the evolution idea, an "all too childish 
and nebulous hypothesis 1 ' (Hegel). 

All the important results of comparative morphology 
and physiology, which the modern supporters of the 
doctrine of descent so confidently utilise as arguments in 
its favour, would have been welcomed by those who held 
the original and general evolution idea, as a corrobora- 
tion of their own standpoint. And as a matter of fact 
they all afford conclusive proofs of evolution ; but not 
one of them, including even the fundamental biogenetic 
law and the inoculated chimpanzee, is decisive in regard 
to descent. This contention is sufficiently important to 
claim our attention for a little. Let us take the last 
example. Transfusion of blood between two species is 
possible, not necessarily because they are descended 
from one another or from a common root, but solely 
because of their systematic (ideal) relationship, that is to 
say because they are sufficiently near to one another 
and like one another in their physiological qualities and 
functions. If, assuming descent, this homology were 
disturbed, and the systematic relationship done away 
with, for instance through saltatory evolution, the mere 
fact of descent would not bring the two species any 
nearer one another. Thus the case proves only 
systematic relationship, and only evolution. But as to 
the meaning of this systematic relationship, whether it 
can be " explained " by descent, whether it has existed 
from all eternity, or how it has arisen, the experiment 
does not inform us. 



RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 



131 



The same idea may be illustrated in regard to 
Weismann's " predicting." This, too, is a proof of 
evolution, but not of descent. Exactly as Weismann 
predicted the striping of the hawk-moth caterpillars 
and the human os centrale, Goethe predicted the 
formation of the skull from modified vertebrae, and the 
premaxillary bone in man. In precisely the same way 
he " derived " the cavities in the human skull from those 
of the animal skull. This was quite in keeping with the 
manner and style of his Goddess Nature and her 
creative transformations, raising the type of her crea- 
tions from stage to stage, developing and expanding 
each new type from an earlier one, yet keeping the later 
analogous to and recapitulative of the earlier, record- 
ing the earlier by means of vestigial and gradually 
dwindling parts. 

But what has all this to do with descent ? Even the 
"biogenetic law" itself, especially if it were correct, 
would fit admirably into the frame of the pure evolution 
idea. For it is quite consistent with that idea to say 
that the higher type in the course of its development, 
especially in its embryonic stages, passes through stages 
representative of the forms of life which are below it 
and precede it in the (ideal) genealogical tree. Indeed, 
the older doctrine of evolution took account of this 
long ago. 

"The same step-ladder which is exhibited by the 
whole animal kingdom, the steps of which are the 
different races and classes, with at the one extreme the 



132 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



lowliest animals and at the other the highest, is exhibited 
also by every higher animal in its development, since 
from the moment of its origin until it has reached its 
full development it passes through — both as regards 
internal and external organisation — the essentials of all 
the forms which become permanent for a lifetime in the 
animals lower than itself. The more perfect the animal 
is, the longer is the series of forms it passes through." 

So J. Fr. Meckel wrote in 1812 in his " Handbook of 
Pathological Anatomy," with no thought of descent. 
And the facts which led to the construction of the bio- 
genetic law were discovered in no small measure by 
Agassiz, who was an opponent of the doctrine of 
descent* 

But the advance from the doctrine of evolution to that 
of descent was imperatively prompted by a recognition of 

* If we wish to, we can even read the " biogenetic law " in Dante. 
See " Purgatory," p. 25, where the embryo attains successively to the 
plant, animal and human stages : 

" Anima fatta la virtute attiva, 
Qual d'una pia?ita. . . 

Come fungo marino . . . 

Ma come d'animal divenga, f ante." 
This is, of course, nothing else than Aristotle's theory of evolution, 
done into terzarima, and corrected by St. Thomas. 

For the latest application of these views, even in relation to the 
"biogenetic fundamental law," see the finely finished "Morpho- 
genetic Studies " of T. Garbowski (Jena, 1903) : "The greater part of 
what is usually referred to the so-called fundamental biogenetic law 
depends on illusion, since all things undeveloped or imperfect must 
bear a greater or less resemblance one to another." 



RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 133 



the fact that the earth is not from everlasting, and that 
the forms of life upon it are likewise not from ever- 
lasting, that, in fact, their several grades appear in an 
orderly ascending series. It is therefore simpler and 
more plausible to suppose that each higher step has 
arisen from the one before it, than to suppose that each 
has, so to speak, begun an evolution on its own account. 
A series of corroborative arguments might be adduced, 
and there is no doubt, as we have said before, that 
the transition from the general idea of evolution to 
that of descent will be fully accomplished. But it is 
plain that the special idea of descent contributes nothing 
essentially new on the subject. 

It is an oft-repeated and self-evident statement, that 
it is in reality a matter of entire indifference whether 
man arose from the dust of the earth or from living 
matter already formed, or, let us say, from one of the 
higher vertebrates. The question still would be, how 
much or how little of any of them does he still retain, 
and how far does he differ from all ? Even if there be 
really descent, the difference may quite as well be so great 
— for . instance, through saltatory development — that 
man, in spite of physical relationship, might belong to 
quite a new category far transcending all his ancestors 
in his intellectual characteristics, in his emotional and 
moral qualities. There is nothing against the as- 
sumption, and there is much to be said in its favour, 
that the last step from animal to man was such an im- 
mense one that it brought with it a freedom and 



184 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



richness of psychical life incomparable with anything 
that had gone before — as if life here realised itself for 
the first time in very truth, and made everything that 
previously had been a mere preliminary play. 

On the other hand, even were there no descent but 
separate individual creation, man might, in virtue of 
his ideal relationship and evolution, appear nothing 
more than a stage relatively separate from those 
beneath him in evolution. It was not the doctrine of 
descent, it was the doctrine of evolution that first 
ranked man in a series with the rest of creation, 
and regarded him as the development of what is be- 
neath him and leads up to him through a gradual 
sequence of stages. And his nearness, analogy, or re- 
lationship to what is beneath him is in no way increased 
by descerit, or rendered a whit more intimate or more 
disturbing. 

The Problema Continui. 

The problem of descent thus shows itself to be one 
which has neither isolated character nor special value. 
It is an accessory accompaniment of all the questions 
and problems which have been raised by, or are asso- 
ciated with, the doctrine of evolution, which would have 
been in our midst without Darwin, which are made 
neither easier nor more difficult by zoological know- 
ledge, and the difficulties of which, if solved, would 
solve at the same time any difficulties presented by 
descent. The following considerations will serve to 



THE PROBLEMA CONTINUI 135 



make this clear. The most oppressive corollary of the 
doctrine of descent is undoubtedly that through it 
the human race seems to become lost in the infra- 
human, from which it cannot be separated by any 
hard and fast boundaries, or absolute lines of demar- 
cation. But it is easy to see that this problem is in 
fact only a part of a larger problem, and that it can 
really be solved only through the larger one. Even if 
it were possible to do away with this unpleasing infer- 
ence as regards the whole human race, so that it could 
be in some way separated off securely from the animal 
kingdom, the same fatality would remain in regard to 
each individual human being. For we have here to face 
the problem of individual development by easy transi- 
tions, the ascent from the animal to the human state, 
and the question : When is there really soul and spirit, 
when man and ego, when freedom and responsibility ? 
But this is the same problem again, only written with 
smaller letters, the general problema continui in the 
domain of life and mind. And the problem is very far- 
reaching. In all questions concerning mental health 
and disease, abnormalities or cases of arrest at an early 
stage of mental development, concerning the greater or 
less degree of endowment for intellectual, moral, and 
religious life, down to utter absence of capacity, and 
this in relation to individuals as well as races and 
peoples, and times ; and again, concerning the gradual 
development of the ethical and religious consciousness 
in the long course of history, in its continuity and 



136 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



gradual transition from lower to higher forms : every- 
where we meet this same problema continui. And our 
oppressive difficulty is bound up with this problem, 
and can be dispelled only by its solution, for the 
gist of the difficulty is nothing else than the gradual- 
ness of human becoming. 

This is not the place for a thoroughgoing dis- 
cussion of this problema continui. We can only call 
to mind here that the " evolution idea " has been the 
doctrine of the great philosophical systems from Aris- 
totle to Leibnitz, and of the great German idealist 
philosophers, in whose school the religious interpreta- 
tion of the world is at home. We may briefly emphasise 
the most important considerations to be kept in 
mind in forming a judgment as to gradual develop- 
ment. 

1. To recognise anything as in course of evolving 
does not mean that we understand its 66 becoming. " 
The true inwardness of " becoming " is hidden in the 
mystery of the transcendental. 

2. The gradual origin of the highest and most 
perfect from the primitive in no way affects the specific 
character, the uniqueness and newness of the highest 
stage, when compared with its antecedents. For, close 
as each step is to the one below, and directly as it 
seems to arise out of it, each higher step has a minimum 
and differentia of newness (or at least an individual 
grouping of the elements of the old), which the 
preceding stage does not explain, or for which it is not 



THE PROBLEMA CONTINUI 137 



a sufficient reason, but which emerges as new from the 
very heart of things. 

3. Evolution does not diminish the absolute value of 
the perfect stage, which is incomparably greater than 
the value of the intermediate stages, it rather accentuates 
it. The stages from the half- developed acorn-shoot 
are not equivalent in value to the perfect tree ; they 
are to it as means to an end, and are of minimal value 
compared with it. 

4. All " descent " and "evolution," which, even in 
regard to the gradual development of physical organisa- 
tion and its secrets, offer not so much an explanation 
as a clue, are still less sufficient in regard to the origin 
and growth of psychical capacity in general, and in 
relation to the awakening and autonomy of the mind 
in man, because the psychical and spiritual cannot be 
explained in terms of physiological processes, from 
either the quantity or the quality of nervous structure. 

This problem, and the relation of the human spirit 
to the animal mind, will fall to be dealt with in 
Chapter XI. It is neither the right nor the duty of 
the religious conception of the world to inquire into 
and choose between the different forms of the idea of 
descent which we have met with. If it has made itself 
master of the general evolution idea, then descent, even 
in its most gradual, continuous, monophyletic form, 
affects it not at all. It can then look on, perhaps not 
with joy, but certainly without anxiety, at Dubois' 
monkey-man and FriedenthaPs chimpanzee. On the 



138 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



other hand, it is obvious that a secret bond of sympathy 
will always unite it with the right wing of the theory 
of descent, with the champions of " halmatogenesis, 1 '* 
heterogenesis,t kaleidoscopic readjustment, &c, because 
in all these the depth and wealth and the mystery of 
phenomena are more obviously recognisable. For the 
same reasons the religious outlook must always 
be interested in all protests against over-hastiness, 
against too great confidence in hypotheses, and against 
too rapid simplification and formulation. And it is 
not going beyond our province to place some reliance 
on the fact that there are increasing signs of revolt 
from the too great confidence hitherto shown in relation 
to the Theory of Descent. The general frame of the 
theory will certainly never be broken, but the enclosed 
picture of natural evolution will be less plain and 
plausible, more complex and subtle, more full of points 
of interrogation and recognitions of the limits of our 
knowledge and the depths of things. 

* I.e., The occurrence of saltatory, transilient, or discontinuous 
variations or mutations. 

f I.e., The emergence of a distinctively new pattern of organisa- 
tion. 



CHAPTER VI 



DARWINISM IN THE STKICT SENSE 

It remains for us to consider what is essentially 
Darwinian in Darwinism, namely, the theory of natural 
selection as the determining factor in evolution. For, 
given the reality of evolution and descent, and that trans- 
formations from one form to another, from lower to 
higher, have really taken place, what was the guiding 
and impelling factor in evolution, what forced it for- 
wards and upwards ? It is here that the real problem of 
Darwinism begins. Only from this point onwards does 
the doctrine of evolution, which is not in itself necessarily 
committed to any theory of the factors, become definitely 
Darwinian or anti-Darwinian. And it is this problem 
that is mainly concerned in the discussions taking place 
to-day as to whether Darwin was right, or whether 
Darwinism as a hypothesis has not broken down. 

The most characteristic feature of Darwin's theory 
was "natural teleology," that is, the explanation of 
what is apparently full of purpose and plan in the 
world, purely as the necessary consequence of very 
simple conditions, without purpose or any striving after 
an aim. He sought to show that evolution and ascent 



140 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



can be realised through purely " natural " causes, that 
this world of life, man included, must have come about, 
but not because it was intended so to do. In this 
sense, indeed, his doctrine is an attempt to do away 
with teleology. But in another sense it is so even 
more emphatically. The world, and especially the 
world of life, is undoubtedly full of what is de facto 
purposive. The living organism, as a whole and in 
every one of its parts, is marvellously adapted to the 
end of performing its functions, maintaining its own 
life and reproducing. Every single living being is a 
miracle of inexhaustible adaptations to an end. Whence 
came these? They, too, are products, unsought for, 
unintended, and yet necessary, and coming about " of 
themselves," that is without teleological or any super- 
natural guiding principles. To eliminate purpose and 
the purposive creating and guiding activity of transcen- 
dental principles from interpretations of nature, and to 
introduce purely naturalistic principles — " principles of 
chance," if we understand chance in this connection 
not as opposed to necessity, but to plan and purpose— 
this is the aim of the Darwinian theory. And it only 
becomes definitely anti-theological because it is anti- 
teleological. 

The conclusions which Darwin arrived at as to the 
factors in the transformation of species, and in the pro- 
duction of "adaptations," have been in part supported by 
the specialists he influenced, in part strengthened, but in 
part modified and even reversed, so that a great crisis 



DARWINISM IN STRICT SENSE 141 

has come about in regard to Darwinism in the strict 
sense — a crisis which threatens to be fatal to it. We 
must here attempt to take a general survey of the state 
of the question and to define our own position. 

Darwin's interpretation is well known. It is the 
theory of the natural selection of the best adapted 
through the struggle for existence, which is of itself a 
natural selection, and results in the sifting out of par- 
ticular forms and of higher forms. Darwin's thinking 
follows the course that all anti-teleological thought has 
followed since the earliest times. In bringing forth the 
forms of life, nature offers, without choice or aim or 
intention, a wealth of possibilities. The forms which 
happen to be best adapted to the surrounding con- 
ditions of life maintain themselves, and reproduce ; the 
others perish, and are eliminated (survival of the 
fittest). Thus arises adaptation at first in the rough, 
but gradually in more and more minute detail. This 
adaptation, brought about by chance, gives the impres- 
sion of intelligent creative purpose. 

In Darwin this fundamental mode of naturalistic 
interpretation took, under the influence of the social- 
economic theories of Mai thus, the special form of 
natural selection by means of the struggle for existence, 
in association with the assumption of unlimited and 
fluctuating variability in the forms of life. All living 
beings have a tendency to increase in number without 
limit. But the means of subsistence and other con- 
ditions of existence do not increase at the same 



142 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

rate; they are relatively constant. Thus competition 
must come about. Any organism that is, by fortui- 
tous variation, more favourably equipped than its 
fellows maintains itself and reproduces itself ; the less 
favoured perish. For all things living are exposed 
to enemies, to untoward circumstances, and the like. 
Every individual favoured above its rivals persists, and 
can transmit to its descendants its own more favourable, 
more differentiated, more highly equipped character. 
Thus evolution is begun, and is forced on into the ever 
more diverse and ever "higher." 

To Darwin this struggle for existence and this selec- 
tion according to utility seemed, at any rate, the chief 
factor in progress. He did, indeed, make some con- 
cessions to the Lamarck ian principle that new characters 
may be acquired by increased use, and to other " secon- 
dary " principles. But these are of small importance as 
compared with his main factor. 

Differences of Opinion as to the Factors in 
Evolution 

The theory of natural selection in the struggle for 
existence rapidly gained wide acceptance, but from the 
first it was called in question from many sides. Bronn, 
who translated Darwin's works into German, was and 
remained loyal to the idea of a "developmental law" 
— that there is within the organism an innate tendency 
towards self-differentiation and progress, thus a purely 



FACTORS IN EVOLUTION 14f3 

teleological principle.* Similarly, von Baer empha- 
sised the idea of an endeavour to realise an aim ; von 
Kolliker, that of " heterogenesis " ; Nageli, that of an 
impulse towards perfection — all three thus recognising 
the theory of evolution, but dissenting from the view 
that the struggle for existence is the impelling factor 
and actual guide in the process. Very soon, in another 
direction, antagonism became pronounced between the 
strictly Darwinian elements of the theory (the struggle 
for existence and its corollaries) and the accessory 
Lamarckian elements. Through these and other con- 
troversies the present state of the question has 
emerged. 

The main antithesis at present is the following. On 
the one side, the " all-sufficiency of natural selection " is 
maintained, that is, progressive evolution is regarded as 
coming about without direct self-exertion on the part 
of the organisms themselves, simply through the fact 
that fortuitous variations are continually presenting 
themselves, and are being selected and established 
according to their utility in the struggle for existence. 
On the other side — with Lamarck — the progress is 
regarded as due to effort and function on the part 
of the organism itself. (Increased use of an organ 
strengthens it ; a changed use transforms it ; disuse 
causes it to degenerate. Thus new characters appear, 
old ones pass away, and in the course of thousands of 

* See H. G. Bronn's Appendix to his translation of Darwin's 
" Origin of Species." First German edition. 



144 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



years the manifold diversity of the forms of life has 
been brought about.) 

Further, by those of the one side variation is regarded 
as occurring by the smallest steps that could have 
selective value in the struggle for existence. To the others 
variation seems to have taken place by leaps and bounds, 
with relatively sudden transformations of the functional 
and structural equilibrium on a large scale. In regard 
to these the role of the struggle for existence must be 
merely subsidiary. This saltatory kind of evolution-pro- 
cess is called "halmatogenesis," or, more neatly, " kaleido- 
scopic variation," because, as the pictures in a kaleido- 
scope change not gradually but by a sudden leap to an 
essentially new pattern, so also do the forms of life. 
Associated with this is the following contrast. One side 
believes in free and independent variation of any organ, 
any part, any function, physical or mental, any instinct, 
and so on, apart from change or persistence in the rest 
of the organism ; the other side believes in the close 
connectedness of every part with the whole, in the strict 
" correlation " of all parts, in variation in one part being 
always simultaneously associated with variation in many 
other parts, all being comprised in the " whole," which 
is above and before all the parts and determines them. 
And further, to one school variation seems without plan 
in all directions, simply plus or minus on either side of 
a mean ; to the other, variation seems predetermined 
and in a definite direction — an " orthogenesis," in fact, 
which is inherent in the organism, and which is in- 



WEISMANNISM 



145 



different to utility or disadvantage, or natural selection, 
or anything else, but simply follows its prescribed path 
in obedience to innate law. The representatives of this 
last position differ again among themselves. Some 
regard it as true in detail, in regard, for instance, to 
the markings of a butterfly's wing, the striping of a 
caterpillar, the development of spots on a lizard ; while 
others regard it as governing the general process of 
evolution as a whole. Finally, there is the most im- 
portant contrast of all. On the one side, subordination, 
passivity, complete dependence on the selective or direc- 
tive factors in evolution, which alone have any power ; 
on the other, activity, spontaneous power of adaptation 
and transformation, the relative freedom of all things 
living, and — the deepest answer to the question of the 
controlling force in evolution — the secret of life. This 
last contrast goes deeper even than the one we have 
already noted, that between the Darwinian and the 
Lamarckian principle of explanation ; and it leads 
ultimately from the special Darwinian problem to quite 
a new one, to be solved by itself — the problem of the 
nature and secret of living matter. 

Weismanxism 

In regard to almost all the points to which we have 
referred, the most consistent and decided champion of 
Darwinism in its essential principles is the zoologist of 
Freiburg, August Weismann.* In long chapters on 

* Finally and comprehensively in the two volumes we have 

K 



146 



NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



the protective coloration of animals, on the phenomena 
of mimicry — that resemblance to foreign objects (leaves, 
pieces of wood, bark, and well-protected animals) by 
which the mimics secure their own safety from enemies — 
on the protective devices in plants, the selective value 
of " the useful " is demonstrated. In regard to the 
marvellous phenomena of " carnivorous " plants, the 
still more marvellous instincts of animals, which cannot 
be interpreted on Lamarckian lines as " inherited habit," 
but only as due to the cumulative influence of selection 
on inborn tendencies, as well as in regard to " symbi- 
osis," " the origin of flowers," and so on, he attempts 
to show that the heterodox attempts at explanation are 
insufficient, and that selection alone really explains. At 
the same time the Darwinian principle is carried still 
further. It is not only among the individuals, the 
" persons," that the selective struggle for existence goes 
on. Personal selection depends upon a " germinal 
selection " within the germ-plasm, influencing it, and 
being influenced by it — for instance, restrained. 

In order to explain the mystery of heredity, Weis- 

already mentioned, " Vortrage fiber die Deszendenztheorie," Jena, 
1902 (Eng. trans., London, 1904). "Natural selection depends 
essentially upon the cumulative augmentation of the most minute 
useful variations in the direction of their utility ; only the useful is 
developed and increased, and great effects are brought about slowly 
through the summing up of many very minute steps. . . . But the 
philosophical significance of natural selection lies in the fact that it 
shows us how to explain the origin of useful, well-adapted structures 
purely by mechanical factors, and without having to fall back upon 
a directive principle." 



WEISMANNISM 



147 



maim Jong ago elaborated, in his germ-plasm theory, 
the doctrine that the developing individual is materially 
preformed, or rather predetermined in the " idants " 
and " ids " of the germ-cell. Thus every one of its 
physical characters (and, through these, its psychical 
characters), down to hairs, skin spots, and birth-marks, 
is represented in the 44 id 11 by 44 determinants " which 
control the 44 determinates " in development. In the 
course of their growth and development these deter- 
minants are subject to diverse influences due to the 
position they happen to occupy, to their quality, to 
changes in the nutritive conditions, and so on. Through 
these influences variations in the determinants may be 
brought about. And thus there comes about a 
44 struggle 11 and a process of selection among the deter- 
minants, the result of which is expressed in changes in 
the determinates, in the direction of greater or less 
development. On this basis Weismann attempts to 
reach explanations of the phenomena of variation, of 
many apparently Lamarckian phenomena, and of recog- 
nised cases of 44 orthogenesis, 11 and seeks to complete 
and deepen Roux^ theory of the 44 struggle of parts, 11 
which was just another attempt to carry Darwinism 
within the organism. 

What distinguishes Weismann, and makes him especi- 
ally useful for our present purpose of coming to an 
understanding in regard to the theory of selection is, 
that his views are unified, definite and consistent. In 
his case we have not to clear up the ground and to 



148 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



follow things out to their conclusions, nor to purge his 
theories from irrelevant, vitalistic, or pantheistic acces- 
sory theories, as we have, for instance, in the case of 
Haeckel. His book, too, is kept strictly within its own 
limits, and does not attempt to formulate a theory of 
the universe in general, or even a new religion on the 
basis of biological theories. Let us therefore inquire 
what has to be said in regard to this clearest and best 
statement of the theory of selection when we consider it 
from the point of view of the religious conception of 
the world. 

Whatever else may be said as to the all-sufficiency of 
natural selection there can be no doubt that it pre- 
supposes two absolute mysteries which defy naturalistic 
explanation and every other, and which are so impor- 
tant that in comparison with them the problem of the 
struggle for efficacy and its meaning fades into in- 
significance. These are the functions and capacities of 
living organisms in general, and in particular those of 
variation and inheritance, of development and self- 
differentiation. What is, and whence comes this mys- 
terious power of the organism to build itself up from 
the smallest beginnings, from the germ ? And the 
equally mysterious power of faithfully repeating the 
type of its ancestors ? And, again, of varying and 
becoming different from its ancestors ? Even the 
" mechanical " theory of selection is forced to pre- 
suppose the secret of life. Weismann indeed attempts 
to solve this riddle through his germ-plasm theory, the 



WEISMANNISM 



149 



predisposition of the future organism in the " ids," deter- 
minants, and biophors, and through the variation of the 
determinants in germinal selection, amphimixis and so 
on. But this is after all only shifting the problem to 
another place, and translating the mystery into alge- 
braical terms, so to speak, into symbols with which one 
can calculate and work for a little, which formulate 
a definite series of observations, an orderly sequence of 
phenomena, which are, however, after all, " unknown 
quantities " that explain nothing. 

In order to explain the developing organism Weis- 
mann assumes that each of its organs or parts, or " in- 
dependent regions," is represented in the germ-plasm by 
a determinant, upon the fate of which the development 
of the future determinate depends. It is thought of as 
a very minute corpuscle of living matter. Thus there 
are determinants of hairs and scales, pieces of skin, pits, 
marks, &c. But every determined organ, or part, or 
44 independent region," is itself in its turn an 44 organ- 
ism," is indeed a system of an infinite number of inter- 
related component parts, and each of these again is 
another, down to the individual cells. And each cell 
is an 44 organism " in itself, and so on into infinity. Is 
all this represented in the determinants ? And how ? 

Further, the individual determinate, for instance of a 
piece of skin, is not something isolated, but passes over 
without definite boundary into others. Therefore the de- 
terminants also cannot be isolated, but must be systems 
within systems, dependent upon and merging into 



150 



NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



one another. How, at the building up of the organism, 
do the determinants find their direction and their 
localisation ? And, especially, how do they set to work 
to build up their organ ? Here the whole riddle of 
the theory of epigenesis, which Weismann wished to do 
away with as a mystery, is repeated a thousand times 
and made more difficult. In order to explain puzzling 
processes on a large scale, others have been constructed, 
which on close investigation prove to be jnst the same 
mysterious and unexplained processes, only made 
infinitely smaller. 

Moreover, even if the whole of " Weismannism," 
including germinal selection, could be accepted, and if 
it were as sufficient as it is insufficient, what we ad- 
vanced at the end of Chapter III. as a standpoint of 
general validity in relation to teleology and theology 
would still hold good. Even an entirely naive, 
anthropomorphic, " supernatural " theology is ready 
to see, in the natural course of things, in the 44 causae 
secundarice" the realisation of Divine purpose, teleology, 
and does not fail to recognise that the Divine purpose may 
fulfil itself not only in an extraordinary manner, through 
44 miracles " and 44 unconditioned " events, but also in 
ordinary ways, 44 through means" and the universal causal 
nexus. Thus it is quite consistent even with a theology 
of this kind to regard the whole system of causes and 
effects, which, according to the Darwin- Weismann doc- 
trine, have gradually brought forth the whole diversity of 
the world of life, with man at its head, in a purely causal 



WEISMANNISM 



151 



way without teleological intervention, as an immense 
system of means marvellous in its intricacy, in the 
inevitable necessity of its inter-relations, and in the 
exactness of its work, the ultimate result of which must 
have come about, but perhaps at the same time was 
intended to come about. Whether I regard this 
ultimate result as the mere consequence of blind happen- 
ings, or as an intended purpose, does not depend, as we 
have seen, upon the knowledge gained by natural 
science, but depends above all on whether this ultimate 
result seems to me of sufficient value to be thought of 
as the purpose of a world-governing intelligence, and 
thus depends upon my personal attitude to human 
nature, reason, mind, and the spiritual, religious, and 
moral life. If I venture to attribute worth, and ab- 
solute worth, to these things, nothing, not even the , 
fact of the " struggle for existence n in its thousand 
forms, in its gradually transforming effects, in the al- 
most endless nexus of its causes and results, germinal 
selection included, can take away my right (and even- 
tually my duty) to regard the ultimate result as an end, 
and the nexus of causes as a system of means. To 
enable me to do this, it is only requisite that internal 
necessity should govern the system, and that the result 
should not be a chance one, so that it might even have 
been suppressed, have failed, or have turned out quite 
differently. Necessity and predetermination are cha- 
racteristic of the relation between means and purpose. 
But this requisite is precisely that which natural science 



152 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



does afford us, — namely, the proof that all phenomena 
are strictly governed by law, and are absolutely prede- 
termined by their antecedents. At this point the re- 
ligious and the scientific consideration coincide exactly. 
The hairs of our head, and the hairs in the fur of a 
polar bear, which is varying towards white, and is there- 
fore selected in the struggle for existence,* even the 
fluctuating variations of a determinant in the germ, are 
" numbered " according to both conceptions. Every 
variation that cropped up, every factor that " selected " 
the fit, and eliminated the unfit, was strictly predestined, 
and must of necessity have appeared as, and when, and 
where it did appear, f 

The whole nexus of conditions and results, the inclined 
plane of evolution and the power of Being to move up 
it, has its sufficient reason in the nature and original 
state of the cosmos, in the constitution of its " matter, 11 
its " energy,' 1 its laws, its sequences and the grouping 
of its phenomena. Only from beginnings so constituted 
could our present world have come to be as it is, and 

* If it were not white it would be observed by the seals, which 
would thus avoid being devoured by it. See Weismann, I., p. 70. 
(English edition, p. 65. ) 

f It is almost comical when Weismann, the champion of the purely 
naturalistic outlook, occasionally forgets his role altogether, and 
puts in a word for " chance," or attempts to soften absolute pre- 
determination. For if even a single wolf should destroy a stag " by 
chance," or if a single " id " should " chance " to grow in a manner 
slightly different fronf that laid down for it by the compelling force of 
preceding and accompanying circumstances, the whole Darwinian 
edifice would be labour lost. 



WEISMANNISM 



153 



that necessarily. Only because the primary possibility 
and fitness for life — vegetable, animal and human — 
was in it from the beginning, could all these have come 
to be. This primary possibility did not "come into 
being," it was a priori immanent in it. Whence came 
this ? There is no logical, comprehensible, or any other 
necessity why there should be a world at all, or why it 
should be such that life and evolution must become 
part of it. Where then lies the reason why it is, rather 
than is not, and why it is as it is ? 

To this must be added what Weismann himself readily 
admits and expressly emphasises. The whole theory 
treats, and must treat plant, animal, and man as only 
ingenious machines, mere systems of physical processes. 
This is the ideal aimed at — to interpret all the pheno- 
mena of life, growth, and reproduction thus. Even 
instincts and mental endowments are so interpreted, 
since there must be corresponding morphological varia- 
tions of the fine structure of the nervous organ, and 
instinctive actions are then " explained " as the func- 
tions of these. But how " mechanical happening " 
comes to have this marvellous inwardness, which we call 
sensation, feeling, perception, thought and will, which 
is neither mechanical nor derivable from anything 
mechanical ; and, further, how physical and psychical 
can condition one another without doing violence to 
the law of the conservation of the sum of energy, is an 
absolute riddle. But this whole psychical world exists, 
with graduated stages perhaps as close to each other as 



154 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

in the physical world, but even less capable than these 
of being explained as having arisen out of their ante- 
cedent lower stages. And this psychical world, which 
is, indeed, related to and dependent upon the corporeal 
life, as also conversely, has its own quite peculiar laws : 
thought does not follow natural laws, but those of 
logic, which is entirely indifferent to exciting stimuli, 
for instance of the brain, which conform to 
natural laws. But this world, its riddles and mysteries, 
its great content and its history, beyond the reach of 
mechanical theories, is so absolutely the main thing 
(especially in regard to the question of the possibility 
of religion), that the question of bodily structure and 
evolution becomes beside it a mere accessory problem, 
and even the last is only a relatively unimportant 
roundabout way of coming at the gist of the business. 
How completely the evolution of the higher mental 
faculties transcends such narrow and meagre formulae as 
the struggle for existence and the like, Weismann him- 
self indicates in connection with man's musical sense, and 
its relation to the " musical " instinct in animals. The 
same and much more might be alleged in regard to the 
whole world of mind, of the aesthetic, ethical and 
religious, of the kingdom of thought, of science, and of 
poetry. 

Natural Selection. 

We have for the moment provisionally admitted 
the theory of natural selection, in order to see 



NATURAL SELECTION 155 



whether it could be included in a religious interpreta- 
tion of things. But in reality such an admission is not 
to be thought of, in face of what is at present so 
apparent — the breaking down of this hypothesis, which 
has been upheld with so much persistence. We shall 
have to occupy ourselves with this later on. In the 
meantime a few more remarks must be added to what 
has been already said. 

It might be said, paradoxically, that the worst fate 
that could befall this hypothesis would be to be proved, 
for then it would be most certainly refuted. What we 
mean is this : If it is really " utility " that rules the 
world and things, there can be no certainty and objec- 
tivity of knowledge, no guarantee of truth. The 
" struggle for existence " is not concerned with selecting 
beings who see the world as it is. It selects only the 
interpretation and conception of the environment that 
is most serviceable for the existence and maintenance of 
the species. But there is nothing to guarantee that 
the " true " knowledge will also be the most useful. It 
might quite well be that an entirely subjective and in 
itself wholly false interpretation would be the most 
serviceable. And if, by some extraordinary chance, the 
selected interpretation should be also the true one, 
there would be no means of establishing the fact. And 
what is true of this interpretation is true also of all 
theories that are derived from it, for example of the 
theory of selection itself. 

Furthermore, a great part, perhaps the greatest part 



156 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

of the confidence placed in the theory of selection is 
due to an involuntary, but entirely fallacious habit of 
crediting it with the probabilities in favour of the 
doctrine of descent. The main arguments in favour of 
evolution and descent are very often, though unwit- 
tingly, adduced in support of Darwinism in particular. 
This is a great mistake. Take, for instance, the 
evidence of the " palaeontological 9 record. It affords 
hundreds of proofs of evolution, but not a single proof 
of selection. Its " intermediate " and " connecting links " 
do possibly prove the affiliation of species and the 
validity of genealogical trees. But precisely the 
" intermediate links " which selection requires — the 
myriads of forms of life which were not successfully 
adapted, the unfit competitors in the struggle for 
existence which must have accompanied the favourably 
adapted variants from step to step, from generation to 
generation — these are altogether awanting. 

Another circumstance seems to us to have been 
entirely overlooked, and it is one which gives the 
theory of selection an inevitable appearance of truth, 
even if it is essentially false, and thus makes it very 
difficult to refute. Assuming that the recognition of 
teleological factors is valid, that there is an inward law 
of development, that " Moses " or whoever one will was 
undoubtedly right, it is self-evident that, because of 
the indubitable over-production of organisms, there 
would even then be a struggle for existence on an 
immense scale, and that it would have a far-reaching 



NATURAL SELECTION 



157 



" selective " influence, because of the relative plasticity 
of many forms of life. Beyond doubt it would, in the 
course of aeons, have applied its shears to many forms of 
life, and probably there would be no organisms, organs, 
or associations in the evolution of the ultimate form 
of which it had not energetically co-operated. Its 
influence would, perhaps, be omnipresent, yet it might 
be far from being the all-sufficient factor in evolution ; 
indeed, as far as the actual impulse of evolution is 
concerned, it might be a mere accessory. Unless we 
are to think of the forms of life as wholly passive and 
wooden, the struggle for existence must necessarily be 
operative, and the magnitude of its results, and their 
striking and often bizarre outcome, will tend ever anew 
to conceal the fact that the struggle is after all only an 
inevitable accompaniment of evolution. And thus we 
understand how it is that interpretations from the 
point of view of an inward law of development, of 
orthogenesis, or of teleology, notwithstanding their 
inherent validity, have a priori always had a relatively 
difficult position as compared with the Darwinian 
view. 

It is usual to speak of the " all-sufficiency of natural 
selection," yet the champion of the selection-theory 
admits, as he needs must, that the struggle for existence 
and selection can of themselves create absolutely 
nothing, no new character, no new or higher 
combination of the vital elements ; they can only take 
what is already given ; they can only select and elimi- 



158 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



nate among the wealth of what is offered.* And the 
offerer is Life itself by virtue of its mysterious capacity 
for boundless and inexhaustible variability, self-enrich- 
ment and increase. The " struggle for existence" only 
digs the bed through which life's stream flows, draws 
the guiding-line, and continually stimulates it to some 
fresh revelation of its wealth. But this wealth was there 
from the beginning ; it was, to use the old word, 
"potential " in the living, and included with it in the 
universal being from which life was called forth. The 
struggle for existence is only the steel which strikes the 
spark from the flint ; is, with its infinite forms and com- 
ponents, only the incredibly complex channel through 
which life forces its way upwards. If we keep this 
clearly in mind, the alarming and ominous element 
in the theory shrinks to half its dimensions. 

And, finally, if we can rid ourselves of the peculiar 
fascination which this theory exercises, we soon begin 
to discover what extraordinary improbability and funda- 
mental artificiality it implies. " Utility " is maintained 
to be that which absolutely, almost tyrannically, de- 
termines form and development in the realm of the 
living. Is this an idea that finds any analogy else- 
where in nature ? Those who uphold the theory most 
strongly are wont to compare the development of 
organisms to crystal -formation in order in some way to 
tack on the living to the not-living. Crystal-formation, 

* See Darwin, ". . . chance variations. Unless such occur, natural 
selection can do nothing." 



NATURAL SELECTION 



159 



with its processes of movement and form-development, 
is, they say, a kind of connecting link between the living 
and the not-living. And in truth we find here, as in the 
realm of life, species-formation, development into indi- 
viduals, stages and systems. But all this takes place 
without any hint of " struggle for existence," of labo- 
riously " selective " processes, or of ingenious accumula- 
tion of 66 variations." The " species M of crystals are 
formed not according to utility, but according to 
inherent, determining laws of development, to which 
the diversity of their individual appearances is due. If 
" Life " were only a higher potential of what is already 
stirring in crystallisation, as this view suggests, then 
we should expect to find fixed tendencies, determined 
from within, in accordance with which life would pass 
through the cycle of its forms and possibilities, and rise 
spontaneously through gradual stages. 



CHAPTER VII 



CEITICS OF DARWINISM 

Let us turn now to the other side. What is opposed 
to Darwinism in the biological investigations of the 
experts of to-day is in part simple criticism of the Dar- 
winian position as a whole or in some of its details, and 
in part constructive individual theories and interpreta- 
tions of the evolution of organisms. 

A. Fleischmann's book, " Die Darwinsche Theorie," * 
is professedly only critical. He suggests no theory of 
his own as to the evolution of life in contrast to 
Darwin's ; for, as we have already seen in connection 
with his earlier book, " Die Deszendenztheorie," he 
denies evolution altogether. His agnostic position is 
maintained, if possible, more resolutely than before. 
Natural science, according to him, must keep to facts. 
Drawing conclusions and spinning theories is inexact, 
and distracts from objective study. The Darwinian 
theory of selection seems to him a particularly good 
example of this, for it is built up a priori on theories 

* " Die Darwinsche Theorie. Geineinverstandliche Vorlesungen 
fiber die Naturphilosophie der G-egenwart gehalten vor Studierenden 
aller Fakultaten," Leipzig, 1903. This book is the continuation of 
the author's " Deszendenztheorie." 



CRITICS OF DARWINISM 



161 



and hypotheses, it stands apart from experimentation, 
and it twists facts forcibly to its own ends. It has, 
however, to be acknowledged that Fleischm ami's book is 
without any " apologetic " intentions. It holds equally 
aloof from teleology. To seek for purposes and aims in 
nature he holds to be outside the business of science, as 
Kant's " Critique of Judgment " suffices to show. After 
having been more than a decade under the charm of the 
theory of selection, Fleischmann knows its fascination 
well, but he now regards it as so erroneous that no one 
who wishes to do serious work should concern himself 
about it at all. Point by point he follows all the 
details of Darwin's work, and seeks to analyse the 
separate views and theories which go to make up Dar- 
winism as a whole. Darwin's main example of the 
evolution of the modern races of pigeons from one 
ancestral form, Cohcmba livia, is, according to Fleisch- 
mann, not only unproved but unprovable.* For this 
itself is not a unified type. The process of " uncon- 
scious selection" by man is obscure, and it is not 
demonstrable, especially in regard to pigeon-breeding. 
It is a hazy idea which cannot be transferred to the 
realm of nature. The Malthusian assumption of the 
necessity of the struggle for existence is erroneous. 
Malthus was wrong in his law of population as applied 

* Fleischmann's book compares favourably with those of other 
naturalists, in that he does not contrast " Moses " and natural 
science, as is customary, but has a deeper knowledge of the modern 
view of Genesis I. than is usually found among naturalists, whether 
of the "positive" or "negative" standpoint. 

L 



162 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

to human life, and Darwin was still more mistaken 
when he transferred it to the organic world in general. 
It was mere theory. Statistics should have been col- 
lected, and observations instead of theories should have 
been sought for. The alleged superabundance of 
organisms is not a fact. The marvellously inter- 
twined conditions in the economy of nature make the 
proportion of supply and demand relatively constant. 
And even when there is actual struggle for existence, 
advantages of situation,* which are quite indifferent as 
far as selection is concerned, are much more decisive 
than any variational differences. The theory does not 
explain the first origin of new characters, which can 
only become advantageous when they have attained to 
a certain degree of development. As to the illustrations 
of the influence of selection given by Darwin, from the 
much discussed fictitious cases, in which the fleet stags 
select the lithe wolf, to the marvellous mutual adapta- 
tions of insects and flowers, Fleischmann objects that 
there is not even theoretical justification for any one of 
them. The spade-like foot of the mole is not " more 
useful" than the form of foot which probably preceded 
it (cf. Goette), it is merely " different." For when the 
mole took to burrowing in the earth and adapting itself 
to that mode of life, it ipso facto forfeited all the advan- 
tages of living above ground. The postulated myriads 
of less well-adapted forms of life are no more to be 
found to-day than they are in the fauna and flora of 
* See also Wolff. 



CRITICS OF DARWINISM 



163 



palaeontological times. The famous giraffe story has 
already been disposed of by Mivart's objections. As to 
the whales, it is objected that the earliest stages of 
their whalebone and their exaggerated nakedness can 
have been of no use, and a series of other alleged selec- 
tive effects of "utility" are critically analysed. The 
refutation of the most brilliant chapter in the Darwinian 
theory, that on protective coloration and mimicry, is 
very insufficient. A long concluding chapter sums up 
the fundamental defects of the Darwinian theory. 

For the most part, Fleischmann simply brings forward 
objections which have been urged against the theory 
of selection from the first, either by naturalists or 
from other quarters. The chief and the most fatal of 
these which are still current are the following : The 
theory of selection does not explain the actually existing 
discontinuity of species. The real characteristics which 
distinguish species from species are in innumerable cases 
quite indifferent from the point of view of 66 utility " 
(Nageli, Bateson). " Selection preserves the good and 
weeds out the bad." But where does the good come 
from ? (De Vries). The first beginnings of what may 
later be useful are almost always useless. The theory 
of selection might perhaps explain the useful qualities, 
but not the superfluous, useless, or directly injurious 
characters which actually exist. Confirmation of the 
theory of descent may be found in the palseontological 
record, but it affords none of the theory of selection. 
Natural selection is continually being neutralised bv 



164 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



subsequent inter-crossing and reversion. Natural 
selection may indeed prevent degeneration within 
the limits of the species by weeding out what is weak 
and bad, but it is powerless beyond these limits, and 
so forth.* 

These ever-repeated and ever-increasing objec- 
tions are purely critical. As this is true of 
Fleischmann's whole book, it is therefore unsatis- 
factory. It leaves everything in the mist, and puts 
nothing in place of what it attempts to demolish. 
But attempts are being made in other quarters, 
especially among the Lamarckians, to build up an 
opposition theory. 



Lamarckism and Neo-Lamarckism 

The " Lamarckian " view as opposed to the Darwinian 
continues to hold its own, and indeed is more ardently 
supported than ever. On this view, evolution has been 
accomplished not by a laborious selection of the best 
which chanced to present itself — a selection in relation 
to which organisms remained passive, but rather through 
the exertions of the organisms themselves. It has been 
especially through the use and exercise of the various 

* See C. C. Coe, " Nature versus Natural Selection," London, 
1895. Perhaps the most comprehensive, many-sided, critical analysis 
of the theory of natural selection. See also Herbert Spencer, "The 
Inadequacy of Natural Selection," 1893. 



LAMARCKISM AND NEO-LAMARCKISM 165 



organs in response to the requirements of life, through 
the increased exercise of physical and mental functions, 
that the organism has adapted itself more diversely and 
more fully to the conditions of its life. What one 
generation acquired in differentiation of structure, in 
capacities and habits, through its own exertions, it 
handed on to the next. By cumulative inheritance there 
ultimately arose the fixed specific characters, and the 
diversity and progressive gradations of organisms have 
gone hand in hand with an ever increasing activity. 
And as with the physical so it has been with the mental. 
Through continual use and exercise of the functions 
their capacity has been increased and modified. Through 
the frequent repetition of voluntary actions necessary 
to life the habitual use of them has come about. Habits 
that have become fixed are correlated with habitual 
psychical predispositions. These, gradually handed on 
by inheritance to the descendants, have resulted in the 
marvellous instincts of animals. Instinct is inherited 
habit that has become fixed. Corresponding to this 
there is on the other hand the recognition — in theory 
at least — that the disuse of an organ, the non- 
exercising of a function leads to degeneration of struc- 
ture and so co-operates in bringing about a gradual but 
persistent modification of the features and constitution 
of organisms. 

These views, which have grown out of Lamarck's 
fundamental ideas ("Philosophic zoologique," 1809) are 
now usually associated with the theory advanced chiefly 



166 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



by Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (" Philosophic zoolo- 
gique," 1830), the opponent of Cuvier, and the ally 
of Goethe, of the direct influence of the monde ambiant. 
The " surrounding world," the influences of climate, of 
locality, of the weather, of nutrition, of temperature, 
of the salinity of the water, of the moisture in the air, 
and all other conditions of existence, influence the living 
organism. And they do so not indirectly, as is implied 
in the process of selection, simply playing the part of a 
sieve, and not themselves moulding and transforming, 
but directly by necessitating the production of new 
developments in the living substance, new chemical 
and physiological activities, new groupings and changes 
of form, and new organs. 

Darwin himself did not regard these two theories as 
opposed to the theory of selection, but utilised them as 
subsidiary interpretations. It is obvious, however, that 
at bottom they conceal an essentially different funda- 
mental idea, which, if followed out to its logical conse- 
quences, reduces the " struggle for existence " to at 
most a wholly indifferent accessory circumstance. 
Weismann felt this, and hence his entirely consistent 
endeavours to show by great examples, such as the 
origin of flowers, the mutual adaptations of flowers and 
insects, the phenomena of mimicry, and many other 
cases, that neither the Lamarckian nor any other factor 
in evolution, except only natural, passive selection, 
suffices as an interpretation. From the Darwinian 
standpoint he is absolutely right, and must needs speak 



LAMARCKISM AND NEO-LAMARCKISM 167 

of the " omnipotence of natural selection," for it must 
either be omnipotent, or it must give place to the other 
two factors, and retain only the significance we attri- 
buted to it in another connection (p. 157), which 
amounts to saying none at all. It is obvious enough why 
the discussion as to these factors should centre round the 
question of the " inheritance of acquired characters," 
" acquired " either through the use or disuse of organs, 
the exercise or non-exercise of functions, or through the 
stimuli of the external world. 

The neo-Lamarckian conflict with Darwinism has 
become more and more acute in recent times, and the 
neo-Lamarckians have sometimes passed from contrast- 
ing rival interpretations to excluding the Darwinian 
factor altogether. As the particular champion of the 
neo-Lamarckian view, we must name Th. Eimer, the 
recently deceased Tubingen zoologist. His chief work 
is in three volumes, entitled " Die Entstehung der Arten 
auf Grund von Vererbung erworbener Eigenschaften, 
nach Gesetzen organischen Wachsens." * It is a polemic 
against Weismannism in all details, even to the theory 
of " germinal selection." Eimer follows in the footsteps 
of St. Hilaire, and shows what a relatively plastic and 
sensitive creature the organism is to the surrounding 
world, the conditions of nutrition and other such 
influences. There is in this connection a particularly 

* Leipzig, 1888, 1897, 1901. In part translated as " Organic 
Evolution." We are here mainly concerned with Vols. I. and III. 
Later on we shall have to discuss Vol. II. 



168 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



instructive chapter on the physiological and other 
variations brought about by external influences which 
act as " stimuli of the nervous system." The whole 
theory of Lamarck and St. Hilaire transcends — not- 
withstanding the protests of Eimer to the contrary — 
the categories of the mechanical theory of life, and this 
chapter does so in particular. The array of facts here 
marshalled as to the spontaneous self-adaptation of 
organisms to their environment — in relation to colour 
mainly — forms the most thoroughgoing refutation 
of Darwinism that it is possible to imagine. It is 
shown, too, by a wealth of examples from osteology, 
how use (and the necessities of the case — a considera- 
tion which again goes beyond the bounds of mere 
Lamarck ism) may modify, increase or diminish vertebrae, 
ribs, skull and limbs, in short, the whole skeleton. 

Kassowitz is equally keen and convinced in his oppo- 
sition to natural selection, and in his comprehensive 
" Allgemeine Biologie " * he attacks orthodox Dar- 
winism from the neo-Lamarckian standpoint. The 
whole of the first volume is almost chapter for chapter 
a critical analysis, and the polemical element rather 
outweighs his positive personal contribution. He criti- 
cises very severely all attempts to carry the Darwinian 
principle of explaining adaptations into internal and 
minute details, arguing against Roux's " Struggle of 
Parts " and Weismanhs " Germinal Selection." And 
though he himself maintains very decidedly that the 

* Wien, 1899. 



LAMARCKISM AND NEO-LAMARCKISM 169 



ultimate aim of biology is to find a mechanical solution 
of the problem of life, he criticises the modern hypo- 
theses in this direction without prejudice, and declares 
them unsuccessful and insufficient, inclining himself 
towards the " neo-vitalistic reaction " in its most recent 
expression. Along with Eimer and Kassowitz, we may 
name W. Haacke, especially in relation to his views on 
the acquisition and transmission of functional modifica- 
tions and his thoroughgoing denial of Darwinism 
proper. But his work must be dealt with later in a 
different connection.* 

These neo-Lamarckian views give us a picture of the 
evolution of the world that is much more convincing 
than the strictly Darwinian one. Instead of passive and 
essentially unintelligent " adaptation " through the sieve 
of selection, we have here direct self-adaptation of 
organisms to the conditions of their existence, through 
their own continual restless activity and exertion, an 
ascent of their own accord to ever greater heights and 
perfections. A theory of this kind might easily form 
part of a religious conception of the world. We might 
think of the world with primitive tendencies and 
capacities, in which the potentialities of its evolution 
were implied, and so ordered that it had to struggle by 
its own exertions to achieve the full realisation of its 

* See Wettstein, " Neolamarckism," Jena, 1902. See also Demoor, 
Massart, Vandervelde, " L'Evolution regressive en Biologie et 
Sociologie," Paris, 1897. Bibliotheque scientific internationale, 
vol. lxxxv. This work is on the Lamarckian basis. It is original in 
applying Lamarckian principles to a theory of society. 



170 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

possibilities, to attain to ever higher — up to the 
highest — forms of Being. The process of nature would 
thus be the direct anticipation of what occurs in the 
history of man and of mind. And the task set to the 
freedom of individual men, and to mankind as a whole, 
namely, to work out their own nature through their own 
labour and exertion, and to ascend to perfection — this 
deepest meaning of all individual and collective exist- 
ence — would have its exact prelude and preparation in 
the general nature and evolution of all living creatures. 
The transition from these theories of nature to a teleo- 
logical outlook from the highest and most human point 
of view is so obvious as to be almost unavoidable. And 
although a natural science which keeps to its own 
business and within its own boundaries has certainly no 
right to make this transition for itself, it has still less 
right to prevent its being made outside of its limits. 

Theory of Definite Variation 

But the question now arises, whether both Darwinism 
and Lamarckism must not be replaced, or at least 
reduced to the level of accessory theories and factors, 
by another theory of evolution which was in the field 
before Darwin, and which since his time has been ad- 
vanced anew, especially by Nageli, and has now many 
adherents who support it in whole or in part. This 
view affects the very foundations of the Darwinian 
doctrine. The theory of " indefinite " variation, bring- 
ing about easy transitions and affecting every part of 



THEORY OF DEFINITE VARIATION 171 



the organism separately, which is the necessary corre- 
late of the i; struggle for existence." is rejected 
altogether. Evolution takes place only along a few 
definite lines, predetermined through the internal 
organisation and the laws of growth. It is wholly 
indifferent to ,; utility, 11 and brings forth only what it 
must according to its own inner laws, not seldom even 
the monstrous. According to this view, new species 
arise, not in easy transition, but with a visible leap, by 
a considerable and far-reaching displacement of the 
organic equilibrium. What Darwin calls the correla- 
tion of parts, and in no way denies, is here maintained 
in strong opposition to his doctrine of the isolated 
variation of individual parts : every member or character 
of the organism depends upon others, and variation of 
one affects many, and in some way all of the rest. 

This theory is for the most part intended by its 
champions to be purelv naturalistic. But every one of 
its points yields support to teleological considerations, 
most obviously so the concrete instances of correla- 
tion. If any one were to attempt to make a theory 
of evolution from a decidedlv teleological standpoint, 
he would probablv construct one very similar to the 
one we are now considering. 

It is noteworthy that it has generally been the 
botanists who have especially supported these views of 
saltatory evolution in a definite direction and according 
to internal law. who have therefore tended to react most 
strongly from Darwinism. We find examples in NagelTs 



m NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

large and comprehensive work, " Mechanisch-physik- 
alische Theorie der Abstammungslehre " ; and, before 
him, in Wigand's " Darwinismus und die Naturfor- 
schung Newton's und Cuvier's " ; in von Kolliker's 
" Heterogenesis " ; in von Baer's " Endeavour after an 
End " ; in the chapter added by the translator, Bronn, 
to the first German edition of the " Origin of 
Species," where he urges weighty objections against the 
theory of selection, and refers to the " innate impulse 
to development, persistently varying in a definite direc- 
tion " ; in Askenasy's oft-quoted " Beitrage zur Kritik 
der Darwinschen Lehre," also referring to "variation 
in a definite direction," for instance, in flowers; in 
Delpino's views, and in the works of many other older 
writers. But we must leave all these out of account 
here, since we are concerned only with the present state 
of the question. 

De Vries's Mutation-Theory 

The work that has probably excited most interest in 
this connection is De Tries' " Die Mutationstheorie : 
Versuche und Beobachtungen iiber die Entstehung von 
Arten im Pflanzenleben." * In a short preliminary 
paper he had previously given some account of his 
leading experiments on a species of evening primrose 
(CEnothera lamarckiana), and the outlines of his theory. 
In the work itself he extends this, adding much concrete 
material, and comparing his views in detail with other 
* Two vols., Leipsig, 1901 and 1902. 



DE VKIES'S MUTATION-THEORY 173 



theories. Darwin, he says, had already distinguished 
between variability and mutability : the former mani- 
festing itself in gradual and isolated changes, the 
latter in saltatory changes on a larger scale. The mis- 
take made by Wallace and bv the later Darwinians has 
been that they regarded this latter form (" single 
variation ") as unimportant and not affecting evolution, 
and the former as the real method of evolutionary 
process. That fluctuating individual variations do occur 
De Vries admits, but only within narrow limits, never 
overstepping the type of the species. Here De Vries 
utilises the recent statistical investigations into the 
phenomena of individual variation and their laws, as 
formulated chiefly by Quetelet and Bateson, which 
were unknown to Darwin and the earlier Darwinians. 
The actual transition from " species to species " is made 
suddenly, by mutation, not through variation. And 
the state of equilibrium thus reached is such a relatively 
stable one that individual variations can only take place 
within its limits, but can in no way disturb it. 

De Vries marshals a series of facts which present in- 
surmountable difficulties to the Darwinian theory, but 
afford corroboration of the Mutation theory. In par- 
ticular, he brings forward, from his years of experiment 
and horticultural observation, comprehensive evidence 
of the mutational origin of new species from old ones by 
leaps, and this not in long-past geological times, but in 
the course of a human life and before our very eyes. The 
main importance of the book lies in the record of these 



174 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



experiments and observations, rather than in the 
theory as such, for the way had been paved for it by 
other workers. 

In contrast to Darwinism, De Vries states the case 
for " Halmatogenesis " (saltatory evolution) and " He- 
terogenesis " (the production of forms unlike the 
parents), taking his examples from the plant world, but 
his attitude to Darwinism is conciliatory throughout. 
Eimer, on the other hand, is sharply antagonistic, espe- 
cially to Weismann ; he takes his proofs from the 
animal kingdom, and in the second volume of his large 
work already mentioned, which deals with the " ortho- 
genesis of butterflies," he attempts to set against the 
Darwinism " chance theory," a proof of " definitely 
directed evolution," and therefore of the " insufficiency 
of natural selection in the formation of species." 

Eimer^s Orthogenesis 

Organisation is due to internal causes. Structural 
characters crystallise out, as it were. " Orthogenesis," 
or the definitely determined tendency of evolution to 
advance in a few directions, is a law for the whole 
of the animate world. In active response to the 
stimuli and influences of the environment the organism 
expresses itself in "organic growth" without any 
relation to utility. Butterflies in particular, and 
especially their markings and coloration, are taken as 
illustrations. In the Darwinian theory of " mimicry " 
these played a brilliant part. The great resemblance 



EIMER'S ORTHOGENESIS 



175 



to leaves, to dried twigs, or to well -protected species 
which are secure from enemies, was regarded as the most 
convincing proof of the operation of natural selection. 
But Eimer shows that markings, striping, spots, the 
development of pattern, and the alleged or real resem- 
blances to leaves, are really subject to definite laws of 
growth, in obedience to which they gradually appear, 
developing according to their own internal laws, varying 
and progressing altogether by internal necessity, and 
without any reference to advantage or disadvantage, 
In association with this orthogenesis, Eimer recognises 
halmatogenesis, correlation and " genepistasis " (coming 
to a standstill at a fixed and definite stage), and these 
seem to him to make the Darwinian theory utterly 
impossible. The text and the illustrations of the book 
show how, in the sequence of evolution (according 
to Eimer 's laws of transformation), the groupings of 
stripes, bands, and eye-spots must have appeared on 
the butterfly's wing, how convex or concave curvings of 
the contour must have come about at certain points, so 
that the form of a 44 leaf" and the lines of its venation 
resulted, how the eye-spots must have been moulded and 
shunted, so that they produced the effect of rust or 
other spots on withered leaves. Particular interest 
attaches to the detailed arguments against the idea that 
the butterfly must receive some advantage from its 
44 mimicry." Even the Darwinians have to admit that 
in a whole series of cases the advantage is not obvious. 
They talk with some embarrassment of 44 pseudo- 



176 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

mimicry." Some butterflies that are supposed to be 
protected have the protective markings on the under- 
side, so that these are actually hidden when the insects 
are flying from pursuing birds. Many of the leaf-like 
butterflies are not wood-butterflies at all, but meadow 
species,* and so Eimer's arguments continue. 

A specially energetic fellow-worker on Eimer's line 
is W. Haacke, a zoologist of Jena, author of 44 Gestal- 
tung und Vererbung, 11 and " Die Schopfung des Men- 
schen und seiner Ideale. 11 f In the first of these works 
Haacke combats, energetically and with much detail, 
Weismann's 44 preformation theory, 11 and defends 44 epi- 
genesis, 11 for which he endeavours to construct graphic 
diagrams, his aim being to make a foundation for the 
inheritance of acquired characters, definitely directed 
evolution, saltatory, symmetrical, and correlated 
variation. 

The principles of the new school are very wide- 
spread to-day, but we cannot here follow their de- 
velopment in the works of individual investigators, 
such as Reinke, R. Hertwig, O. Hertwig, Wiesner, 
Hamann, Dreyer, Wolff, Goette, Kassowitz, v. Wett- 
stein, Korschinsky, and others.^ 

* It remains open to question whether Eimer's explanation is 
sufficient in all cases, even those of the exaggeratedly deceptive 
copies of leaves or bark, or the colour of the environment. It is 
certainly not the sorry explanation in terms of "Variation and 
Selection," but that of a spontaneous imitation of the surroundings, 
that forces itself irresistibly upon us in this connection. 

f Jena, 1892 and 1895. 

{ See Eeinke, "Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie," 1901, 



ACTIVITY OF THE ORGANISM 177 



The Spontaneous Activity of the Organism 

What is particularly luminous in all the theories that 
express the most recent anti-Darwinian tendency is 
that they tend to bring into prominence the mysterious 
powers of living organisms, by means of which, instead 
of passively waiting for natural selection and the con- 
tinual accumulation of unceasing variations, they are 
able spontaneously and of themselves to bring forth 
what is necessary for self-maintenance, often what is 
new and different, of course not unlimitedly, but with 
considerable freedom and often with a surprising range 
of possibilities. It is, perhaps, partly the fault of 
the one-sidedness of strict Darwinism that this con- 
sideration has been so slowly brought into prominence 
and subjected to investigation and experiment. It is 
bound up with the capacity that all forms of life 
have of reacting spontaneously to 44 stimuli " and, 
to a certain extent, of helping themselves if the 
conditions of existence be unfavourable. They are 
able, for instance, to produce protective adaptations 
especially pp. 463 onwards on "Phylogenetisches Bildungspotential." 
von Wettstein (On direct adaptation)," N/eolamarkismus," Jena, 1902. 
Cf. " Wissensch-Beitrage zum 15 Jahresberichte (1902) der Philos. 
Gesellschaft an der Universitat zuWien : Vortrage und Bespreclmngen 
iiber die Krisis der Darwinismus." M. Kassowitz, " Allgemeine 
Biologie," I. and II., 1899. 0. Hertwig, " Entwicklung der Biologie 
im 19. Jahrhundert." Wiesner, " Elemente der wissenschaftlichen 
Botanik." (<?/. especially III. " Biologie der Pflanzen "), and on p. 288 
the summary of propositions which are very similar to those formu- 
lated later by Korschinsky. (" Auf Grund des den Organismen 
innewohnenden Vervollkommnungstriebes.") 

M 



178 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



against cold or heat, to " regenerate " lost parts, often 
to replace entire organs that have been lost, and, 
under certain circumstances, to produce new organs 
altogether. If all this be true, it seems almost like 
caprice to follow only the roundabout theory of the 
struggle for existence, and not to take account of 
these spontaneous capacities of the living organism 
directly and before all other factors in the attempt 
to explain evolution. There is no end to the illus- 
trations that are being adduced, that must force in- 
vestigation to pass from merely superficial considera- 
tions of the struggle for existence type to the deeper 
and more real problems themselves. 

An effectively modified and adapted type of Alpine 
flora has not been evolved by a laborious process of 
selection lasting for many thousand years ; the organism 
may quickly and immediately produce the new characters 
by its own reaction. Crustaceans gradually transferred 
from a salt-water to a fresh-water habitat, or conversely, 
produce in a few generations the type of a new "species" 
with correlated variations (Schmankewitsch). Birds 
weaned by careful experiment from a diet of seeds to 
one of flesh, or conversely, produce changes of effective 
correlation and adaptation in the characters of their 
alimentary system. Plants that have been deprived of 
their normal organs for absorbing water and prevented 
from growing new ones produce entirely new and 
effective " hydatodes." * 

* See the particularly beautiful and suggestive experiments of 



ACTIVITY OF THE ORGANISM 



179 



It is instructive to notice that Darwinism seems 
likely to be robbed of its stock illustration, namely, 
" protective coloration." By its own internal power of 
reaction, and sometimes within one generation, and 
even in the lifetime of an individual, an organism may 
assume the colour of the substratum beneath it (soles, 
grasshoppers), of its surroundings (Elmer's tree frogs), 
the colour and spottiness of the granite rock on which 
it hangs, the colour of the leaves and twigs among 
which it lives (Poulton's butterfly pupae), and even that 
of the brightly coloured sheets of paper amidst which 
it is kept imprisoned. Certain spiders assume a white, 
pink, or greenish " protective coloration " corresponding 
to the tinted blossom of the plants which they frequent, 
and so on.* Eimer alleged that direct psychical factors 
co-operated in bringing about these changes. In any 
case, all this carries us far beyond the domain of 
mere naturalistic factors into the mystery of life 
itself. Even what is called the " influence of the 
external world," and the 44 active acquirement of new 
characters," have their basis and the reason of their 
possibility in this domain. And the whole domain 
is saturated through and through with " teleology." 

A recognition of the impressive secret of the organism 
led Gustav Wolff to become a very pronounced critic 
of Darwinism, especially in the form of Weismannism. 

Haberlandt : " Experimentelle Hervorrufung ernes neuen Organs." 
In "Festschrift fur Schwendoner," Berlin (Borntraeger), 1899. 
* See "Nature," 1891, p. 441. 



180 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



As far back as 1896, in a lecture " On the present 
position of Darwinism, 11 in which he dealt only with 
Weismann, he criticised and analysed that author's last 
attempt to uphold Darwinism by the construction of 
his theory of 44 germinal selection. 11 He concluded with 
the wish : 

''That a spirit of earnestness would once more 
enter into biological investigation, which would no 
longer attempt to find in nature just what it wanted 
to find, but would be ready to follow truth at all 
costs, and to approach the riddle of life with an open 
mind. 11 

His " Beitrage zur Kritik der Darwinischen Lehre, 11 
which appeared first as papers in the " Biologisches 
Centralblatt, 11 did not see the light in book form until 
1898. The doctrine of selection was regarded as so 
unassailable that no publisher would take the risk of 
the book. Its appearance is a sure indication of the 
general modification of opinions that had taken place 
in the interval. The first and second essays are merely 
critical objections to the theory of selection, very 
similar to those frequently urged before, but more 
precisely stated.* The third is intended to show that 
there is in the forms of life themselves, as a faculty of 
adaptation peculiar to them, a primary purposiveness, 
which is unquestionably active throughout the lifetime 
and development of every individual, but which is also 
the deepest cause of " phylogenesis, 11 or the formation 
* See "Nature," 1891, p. 44] . 



ACTIVITY OF THE ORGANISM 181 



of a race. This doctrine makes both the Darwinian 
and Lamarckian theories merely secondary. For the 
phenomena which suggest the Lamarckian interpretation 
presuppose this most essential factor — the primary 
adaptiveness. Wolff concludes with a very striking 
instance — discovered by himself — of this primary adap- 
tiveness of the organism — the regeneration of the lens 
in the newt's eye. 

More comprehensively, but from a precisely similar 
standpoint, Driesch has followed up the discussion of 
this problem. f He is, of all modern investigators, per- 
haps the one who has most persistently and thoroughly 

t The variation-increment of the selection theory ought to be a 
differential. But in many cases it is not so. As for instance in 
symmetrical correlated variation, &c. In the struggle for existence 
it is usually not advantages of organisation which are decisive, but 
the chance advantages of situation, though these have no " selective " 
influence. The case of the tapeworm is illustrative. 

Hi3 work, "Die organischen Kegulationen, Vorbereitungen zu 
einer Theorie des Lebens," 1901, is a systematic survey of illustra- 
tions of the "autonomy" of vital processes. In his " Analytischen 
Theorie der organischen Entwicklung," Leipzig, 1894, his special 
biological (" ontogenetic ") views are still in process of development. 
But even here his sharp rejection of Darwinism is complete (see VI., 
Par. 3, on " the absurd assumption of a contingent character of 
morphogenesis' 5 ). It is not for nothing that the book is dedicated 
to YVigand and C. F. von Baer. He says that in regard to develop- 
ment we must "picture to ourselves external agents acting as 
stimuli and achieving transformations which have the character, 
not aualysable as to its causes, of being adapted to their end, 
that is, capable of life." Incomplete, but very instructive too, 
are his discussions on the causal and the teleological outlook, the 
necessity for both, and the impossibility of eliminating the latter 
from the study' of nature. In a series of subsequent works, Driesch 
has defined and strengthened this position, finally reaching the 



182 



NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



worked out the problem of causal and teleological 
interpretation, and he has also thrown much light on 
the scientific and epistemological aspects of the problem. 
That he could, in a recent volume of the " Biologisches 
Zentralblatt," write a respectful and sympathetic ex- 
position of the Hegelian nature-philosophy — as regards 
its aims, though not its methods — is as remarkable a 
symptom as we can instance of the modern trend of 
views and opinions.* 

Contrast Between Darwinian and Post- 
Darwinian Views 

The new views that have thus arisen have been 
definitely summarised and clearly contrasted with 
Darwinism by the botanist Korschinsky. He died 
before completing his general work, " Heterogenesis 
und Evolution," but he has elsewhere f given an excellent 
summary of his results, which we append in abstract. 

Darwin. Korschinsky and the 

Moderns. 

(1) Everything organic is (1) Everything organic is 
capable of variation. Variations capable of variation. This 



declaration: "Darwin belongs to history, just like that other 
curiosity of our century, the Hegelian philosophy. Both are varia- 
tions on the theme, ' How to lead a whole generation by the nose ! ' " 
(" Biolog. Zentralbl." 1896, p. 16). We are concerned with Driesch 
more particularly in Chapter IX. 

* See Driesch " Kritisches und Polemisches," Biol. Zentrabl., 1902, 
p. 187, Note 2. 

j " Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift," xiv., p. 273. 



POST-DARWINIAN THEORIES 183 



arise in part from internal, in 
part from external causes. They 
are slight, inconspicuous, indi- 
vidual differences. 



(2) The struggle for existence. 
This combines, increases, fixes 
useful variations, and eliminates 
the useless. All the characters 
and peculiarities of a finished 
species are the results of long- 
continued selection ; they must 
therefore be adapted to the 
external conditions. 

(3) The species is subject to 
constant variation. It is con- 
tinually subject to selection and 
augmentation of its characters. 
Hence again the origin of new 
species. 



(4) The sharper and more acute 
the effect, of the environment, 
the keener is the struggle for 
existence, and the more rapidly 
and certainly do new forms 
arise. 



(5) The chief condition of evo- 
lution is therefore the struggle 



capability is a fundamental, in- 
herent character of living forms 
in general, and is independent of 
external conditions. It is usually 
kept latent by " heredity," but 
occasionally breaks forth in 
sudden variations. 

(2) Saltatory variations. — 
These are, under favourable cir- 
cumstances, the starting-point of 
new and constant races. The 
characters may sometimes be use- 
ful, sometimes quite indifferent, 
neither advantageous nor dis- 
advantageous. Sometimes they 
are not in harmony with external 
circumstances. 

(3.) All fully developed species 
persist, but through heterogenesis 
a splitting up into new forms 
may take place, and this is 
accompanied by a disturbance of 
the vital equilibrium. The new 
state is at first insecure and 
fluctuating, and only gradually 
becomes stable. Thus new forms 
and races arise with gradual 
consolidation of their constitu- 
tion. 

(4) Only in specially favour- 
able conditions, only when the 
struggle for existence is weak, or 
when there is none, can new 
forms arise and become fixed. 
When the conditions are severe 
no new forms arise, or if they do 
they are speedily eliminated. 

(5) The struggle for existence 
simply decimates the overwhelm- 



184 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



for existence and the selection 
which this involves. 



(6) If there were no struggle 
for existence there would be no 
adaptation, no perfecting. 



ing abundance of possible forms. 
Where it occurs it prevents the 
establishment of new variations, 
and in reality stands in the way 
of new developments. It is 
rather an unfavourable than an 
advantageous factor. 

(6) Were there no struggle for 
existence, there would be no 
destruction of new forms, or of 
forms in process of arising. The 
world of organisms would then 
be a colossal genealogical tree of 
enormous luxuriance, and with 
an incalculable wealth of forms. 

(7) The adaptation which the 
struggle for existence brings 
about has nothing to do with 
perfecting, for the organisms 
which are physiologically and 
morphologically higher are by no 
means always better adapted to 
external circumstances than those 
lower in the scale. Evolution 
cannot be explained mechanically. 
The origin of higher forms from 
lower is only possible if there is 
a tendency to progress innate 
in the organism itself. This 
tendency is nearly related to or 
identical with the tendency 
to variation. It compels the 
organism to perfect itself as far 
as external circumstances will 
permit. 

All this implies an admission of evolution and of 
descent, but a setting aside of Darwinism proper as an 
unsuccessful hypothesis, and a positive recognition of 



(7) Progress in nature, the 
" perfecting " of organisms, is 
only an increasingly complex 
and ever more perfect adaptation 
to the external circumstances. 
It is attained by purely mechan- 
ical methods, by an accumulation 
of the variations most useful at 
the time. 



POST-DARWINIAN THEORIES 185 



an endeavour after an aim, internal causes, and teleo- 
logy in nature, as against fortuitous and superficial 
factors. This opens up a vista into the background of 
things, and thereby yields to the religious conception all 
that a study of nature can yield — namely, an acknow- 
ledgment of the possibility and legitimacy of inter- 
preting the world in a religious sense, and assistance in 
so doing. 

The most important point has already been empha- 
sised. Even if the theory of the struggle for existence 
were correct, it would be possible to subject the world 
as a whole to a teleological interpretation. But these 
anti-Darwinian theories now emerging, though they do 
not directly induce teleological interpretation, suggest 
it much more strongly than orthodox Darwinism does. 
A world which in its evolution is not exposed, for good 
or ill, to the action of chance factors — playing with it 
and forcing it hither and thither — but which, exposed 
indeed to the most diverse conditions of existence and 
their influences, and harmonising with them, neverthe- 
less carries implicitly and infallibly within itself the 
laws of its own expression, and especially the necessity 
to develop upwards into higher and higher forms, is 
expressly suited for teleological consideration, and we 
can understand how it is that the old physico-teleo- 
logical evidences of the existence of God are beginning 
to hold up their heads again. They are wrong when 
they try to demonstrate God, but quite right when 
they simply seek to show that nature does not con- 



186 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



tradict — in fact that it allows room and validity to — 
belief in the Highest Wisdom as the cause and guide of 
all things natural. 

As far as the question of the right to interpret 
nature teleologically is concerned, it would be entirely 
indifferent whether what Korschinsky calls " the ten- 
dency to progress," and the system of laws in obedience 
to which evolution brings forth its forms, can be inter- 
preted " mechanically " or not ; that is to say, whether 
or not evolution depends on conditions and poten- 
tialities of living matter, which can be demonstrated 
and made mechanically commensurable or not. It may 
be that they can neither be demonstrated nor made 
mechanically commensurable, but lie in the impene- 
trable mystery inherent in all life. Whether this 
mystery really exists, and whether religion has any 
particular interest in it if it does, must be considered in 
the following chapter. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE MECHANICAL THEOEY OF LIFE 

What is life — not in the spiritual and transcendental 
sense, but in its physical and physiological aspects ? 
What is this mysterious complex of processes and 
phenomena, common to everything animate, from the 
seaweed to the rose, and from the human body to the 
bacterium, this ability to " move " of itself, to change 
and yet to remain like itself, to take up dead sab- 
stances into itself, to assimilate and to excrete, to 
initiate and sustain, in respiration, in nutrition, in 
external and internal movements, the most complex 
chemical and physical processes, to develop and build 
up through a long series of stages a complete whole 
from the primitive beginnings in the germ, to grow, to 
become mature, and gradually to break up again, and 
with all this to repeat in itself the type of its parent, 
and to bring forth others like itself, thus perpetuating 
its own species, to react effectively to stimuli, to pro- 
duce protective devices against injury, and to regene- 
rate lost parts ? All this is done by living organisms, 
all this is the expression in them of " Life. 1 ' What is it ? 
Whence comes it ? And how can it be explained ? 



188 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



The problem of the nature of life, of the principle of 
vitality, is almost as old as philosophy itself, and from 
the earliest times in which men began to ponder over 
the problem, the same antitheses have been apparent 
which we find to-day. Disguised under various catch- 
words and with the greatest diversities of expression, the 
antitheses remain essentially the same through the 
centuries, competing with one another, often mingling 
curiously, so that from time to time one or other almost 
disappears, but always crops up again, so that it seems 
as if the conflict would be a never-ending one — the 
antitheses between the mechanical and the " vitalistic " 
view of life. On the one side there is the conviction 
that the processes of life may be interpreted in terms 
of natural processes of a simple and obvious kind, 
indeed directly in terms of those which are most 
general and most intelligible — namely, the simplest 
movements of the smallest particles of matter, which 
are governed by the same laws as movement in general. 
And associated with this is the attempt to take away 
any special halo from around the processes of life, 
to admit even here no other processes but the mechan- 
ical ones, and to explain everything as the effect of 
material causes. On the opposite side is the conviction 
that vital phenomena occupy a special and peculiar 
sphere in the world of natural phenomena, a higher 
platform ; that they cannot be explained by merely 
physical or chemical or mechanical factors, and that, if 
" explaining " means reducing to terms of such factors, 



MECHANICAL THEORY OF LIFE 189 



they do in truth include something inexplicable. These 
opposing conceptions of the living and the organic 
have been contrasted with one another, in most precise 
form and exact expression, by Kant in certain chapters 
of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, which must be regarded 
as a classic for our subject.* But as far as their 
general tendency is concerned, they were already repre- 
sented in the nature-philosophies of Democritus on the 
one hand, and of Aristotle on the other. 

All the essential constituents of the modern mechan- 
ical theories are really to be found in Democritus, the 
causal interpretation, the denial of any operative 
purposes or formative principles, the admission and 
assertion of quantitative explanations alone, the denial 
of qualities, the reduction of all cosmic developments to 
the " mechanics of the atom " (even to attractions and 
repulsions, thus setting aside the " energies ,, ) 5 the 
inevitable necessity of these mechanical sequences, indeed 
at bottom even the conviction of the "constancy of the 
sum of matter and energy." (For, as he says, " nothing 
comes out of nothing.") And although he makes the 
" soul " the principle of the phenomena of life, that is 
in no way contradictory to his general mechanical theory, 
but is quite congruent with it. For the " soul " is to 
him only an aggregation of thinner, smoother, and 

* See § 70 and subsequent sections. Take, for instance, the 
sentences : — " Every production of material things and of their forms 
must be interpreted as possible in terms of purely mechanical laws," 
and the contrast : " Some products of material nature cannot be 
interpreted as possible in terms of purely mechanical laws." 



190 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

rounder atoms, which as such are more mobile, and can, 
as it were, quarter themselves in the body, but neverthe- 
less stand in a purely mechanical relation to it. 

Aristotle, who was well aware of the diametrica 
opposition, represents, as compared with Democritus, the 
Socratic-Platonic teleological interpretation of nature, 
and in regard to the question of living organisms his 
point of view may quite well be designated by the 
modern name of " vitalism. , ' , Especially in his theory 
of the vegetable soul, the essence of vitalism is already 
contained. It is the \6yog hv\og (logos enhylos), the 
idea immanent in the matter, the conceptual essence of 
the organism, or its ideal whole, which is inherent in it 
from its beginnings in the germ, and determines, like a 
directing law, all its vegetative processes, and so raises 
it from a state of " possibility " to one of " reality." 
All that we meet with later as " nisus formativus,"" as 
" life-force" (vis vitalis), as "endeavour after an end " 
(Zielstrebigkeit), is included in the scope of Aristotelian 
thought. And he has the advantage over many of his 
successors of being very much clearer.* 

* To Aristotle the " Soul " (^vxv Putwctj Psyche, phytike) was in the 
first place a purely biological principle. But by means of his elastic 
formula of Potentiality and Actuality he was able to make the 
transition to the psychological with apparent ease. The biological is 
to him in " potentiality " what sensation, impulse, imagination are in 
" realisation." But the biological and the psychological are not related 
to one another as stages. Growth, form, development, &c, cannot 
be carried over through any " actualisatio " into sensation, con- 
sciousness and the like. 

An essentially different question is, whether the biological may not 
be not indeed derivable from the psychological — that would be the 



MECHANICAL THEORY OF LIFE 191 



The present state of the problem of life may be 
regarded as due to a reaction of biological investigation 
and opinion from the " vitalistic " theories which 
prevailed in the first half of last century, and which 
were in turn at once the root and the fruit of the 
German Nature-philosophy of that time. 

Lotze in his oft-quoted article, " Leben, Lebenskraft " 
(Life, Vital Force), in Wagner's " Hand-Worterbuch 
der Physiologic," 1842, gave the signal for this reaction. 
The change, however, did not take place suddenly. The 
most important investigators in their special domain, 
the physiologist Johannes Miiller, the chemist Julius 
Liebig, remained faithful to a modified vitalistic stand- 
point. But in the following generation the revolution 
was complete and energetic. With Du Bois-Reymond, 
Virchow, Haeckel, the anti-vitalistic trend became more 
definite and more widespread. It had a powerful ally 
in the Darwinian theory, which had been promulgated 
meanwhile, and at the same time in the increas- 
ingly materialistic tendency of thought, which afforded 
support to the mechanical system and also sought 
foundations in it. 

The naturalistic, " mechanical " interpretation of life 

was so much in the tenor of Darwin's doctrine that it 

would have arisen out of it if it had not existed before. 

It is so generally regarded as a self-evident and necessary 

same mistake — but dependent on, and conditioned by it, just as we 
regard the voluntary moving and directing of the body as dependent 
on it. An imaginative interpretation of the world will always take 
this course. 



192 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



corollary of the strictly Darwinian doctrine, that it is 
often included with it under the name of Darwinism, 
although Darwin personally did not devote any atten- 
tion to the problem of the mechanical interpretation of 
life. Any estimate of the value of one must be 
associated with an estimate of the other also. 

It goes without saying that the theory of life is 
dependent upon, and in a large measure consists of 
physico-chemical interpretations, investigations, and 
methods. For ever since the attention of investigators 
was directed to the problems of growth, of nutrition, of 
development and so on, and particularly as knowledge 
has passed from primitive and unmethodical forms to 
real science, it has been taken as a matter of course that 
chemical and physical processes play a large part in life, 
and indeed that everything demonstrable, visible, or 
analysable, does come about " naturally," as it is said. 
And from the vitalistic standpoint it has to be asked 
whether detailed biological investigation and analysis 
can ever accomplish more than the observation and 
tracing out of these chemical and physical processes. 
Anything beyond this will probably be only the defining 
and formulating of the limits of its own proper sphere 
of inquiry, and a recognition, though no knowledge, of 
what lies beyond and of the co-operative factors. The 
difference between vitalism and the mechanical theory 
of life is not, that the one regards the processes in the 
organism as opposed to those in the inorganic world 
while the other identifies them, but that vitalism regards 



MECHANICAL THEORY OF LIFE 



193 



life as a combination of chemical and physical processes, 
with the co-operation and under the regulation of other 
principles, while the mechanical theory leaves these 
other principles out. 

Notwithstanding the many noteworthy reactions, we 
are bound to regard the present state of the theory of 
life as on the whole mechanical. The majority of ex- 
perts — not to speak of the popular materialists, and 
especially those who, sailing under the flag of material- 
istic interpretation, have their ships full of vitalistic 
contraband — regard as the ideal of their science an 
ultimate analysis of the phenomena of life into me- 
chanical processes, into "mechanics of the atom." 
They believe in this ideal, and without concealing that 
it is still very far off, do not doubt its ultimate attain- 
ability, and regard vitalistic assumptions as obstacles to 
the progress of investigation. Moreover, this aspect of 
the problem seems likely enough to be permanent with 
the majority, or, at any rate, with many naturalists, 
though it is obviously one-sided. For it has always 
been the task of this line of investigation to extend the 
sphere within which physical and chemical laws can be 
validly applied in interpreting vital processes, and the 
results reached along this line will always be so numerous 
and important that even on psychological grounds the 
mechanical point of view has the best chance for the 
future. Furthermore, the maxim that all the pheno- 
mena of nature must be explained by means of the 
simplest factors and according to the smallest possible 

N 



194 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



number of laws, is usually regarded as one of the most 
legitimate maxims of science in general, so that the 
resolute pertinacity with which many investigators 
maintain the entire sufficiency of the mechanical 
interpretation, far from being condemned as material- 
istic fanaticism, must be respected as the expres- 
sion of scientific conscience. Even when confidence 
in the one-sided mechanical interpretation of vital pro- 
cesses sometimes fails in face of the great and striking 
riddles of life, it is to be expected that it will revive 
again with each new success, great or small.* 

The mechanical conception of life which now prevails 
is made up of the following characteristics and com- 
ponent elements. These also indicate the lines along 
which the arguments are worked out — lines which 
glimmered faintly through the mechanical theories of 
ancient times, but which have now been definitely 
formulated and supported by evidence. 

The Conservation of Matter and Energy 

1. The whole mechanical theory is based upon a law 
which is not strictly biological but belongs to science in 

* Of course all this still gives us no ground for drawing conclu- 
sions as to the correctness of the mechanistic theory, but only affords 
a reason for its power of persistence. Indeed, the very fact that, 
in investigating the problem of life, instinct directs us towards 
mechanical interpretations, should give added weight to the other 
fact, that among the ranks of naturalists themselves there constantly 
arise doubts and criticisms of the adequacy of this mode of inter- 
pretation, and that many of them go over more or less completely to 
the vitalistic point of view. 



CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 195 



general — the law of the conservation of matter and 
energy. This was first recognised by Kant as a 
general rational concept in his u Critique " and in the 
" GrundJegung der Metaphysik der NaturwissenschafV 1 
and was transferred by Robert Mayer and Helm hoi tz * 
to the domain of natural science. Just as no particle 
of matter can come from nothing or become nothing, 
so no quantum of energy can come from nothing 
or become nothing. It must come from somewhere 
and must remain somewhere. The form of energy 
is continually changing, but the sum of energy in 
the universe remains invariable and constant. There- 
fore, it seems to follow, there can be no specific vital 
phenomena. The energies concerned in the up-building, 
growth, and decay of the organism, and the sum of the 
functions performed by it, must be the exact resultant 
and equivalent of the potential energies stored in its 
material substance and the co-operative energies of its 
environment. The particular course of transformations 
they follow must have its sufficient reason in the con- 
figuration of the parts of the organism, in its relations 
to the environment, and the like. An intervention of 
" vitalistic " principles, directions and so forth, would, 
we are told, involve a sudden obtrusion and disappear- 
ance again of energy-effects which had no efficient 
cause in the previous phenomena. From any point of 
view it would be a miracle, and in particular it would 

* H. Helmholtz, " Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft, eine physika- 
lische Abhandlung," Berlin, 1817. 



196 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



be doing violence to the law of the constancy of the 
sum of energy. 

Apart from the inherent general " instinct " — sit 
venia verbo, for no more definite word is available — 
which is the quiet Socius, the concealed but powerful 
spring of the mechanistic convictions, as of most others, 
this law of the conservation of energy is probably the 
really central argument, and it meets us again more or 
less disguised in what follows. 

The Organic and the Inorganic 

2. What is on a priori grounds demanded as a 
necessity, or set aside as impossible, on the strength of 
the axiom of the conservation of energy, must be proved 
a posteriori by investigation. It must be shown in 
detail that the difference between the organic and the 
inorganic is only apparent. And it is here that the 
mechanical view of life celebrates its greatest triumph. 

For a long time it seemed as though there were an 
absolute difference between " inorganic" and " organic" 
chemistry, between the chemical processes and products 
found in free nature, and those within the " living M 
body. The same elements were indeed found in both, 
but it seemed as if they were subject in the living body 
to other and higher laws than those observed in inani- 
mate nature. Out of these elements the organism 
builds up, by unexplained processes, peculiar chemical 
individualities, highly organised and complex combina- 
tions which are never attained in inorganic nature. This 



THE ORGANIC AND THE INORGANIC 197 



seems to afford indubitable evidence of a vital force 
with mysterious super-chemical capacities. 

But modern chemical science has succeeded in doing 
away with this absolute difference between the two 
departments of chemistry, for it has achieved, in retorts, 
in the laboratory, and with " natural w chemical means, 
what had hitherto only been accomplished by " organic " 
chemistry. Since Wohler's discovery that urea could be 
built up by artificial combination, more and more of 
the carbon-compounds which were previously regarded 
as specialities of the vital force have been produced by 
artificial syntheses. The highest synthesis, that of pro- 
teids, has not yet been discovered, but perhaps that, too, 
may yet be achieved. 

And further : intensive observation through the micro- 
scope and in the laboratory increases the knowledge of 
processes which can be analysed into simple chemical 
processes, both in the plant and the animal body. 
These are astonishing in their diversity and complexitv, 
but nevertheless they fulfil them selves according to known 
chemical laws, and they can be imitated apart from the 
living substance. The " breaking up " of the molecules 
of nutritive material, — that is to say, the preparation of 
them as building material for the body. — does not take 
place magically and automatically, but is associated with 
definitely demonstrable chemical stuffs, which produce 
their effect even outside of the organism. The funda- 
mental function of living matter — " metabolism,' 1 — that 
is, the constant disruption and reconstruction of its own 



198 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



substance, has, it seems, been brought at least nearer 
to a possible future explanation by the recognition of 
a series of phenomena of a purely chemical nature, the 
catalytic phenomena (the effects of ferments or " en- 
zymes "). Ingenious hypotheses are already being con- 
structed, if not to explain, at least to give a general 
formulation of these facts, which will serve as a frame- 
work and guiding clue, as a " working hypothesis " for 
the further progress of investigation. 

The most recent of these hypotheses is that set forth 
by Verworn in his book " Die Biogenhypothese/ , * He 
assumes, as the central vehicle of the vital functions, a 
unified living substance, the " biogen," nearly related to 
the proteids which form the fundamental substance of 
protoplasm and of the cell-nucleus, and in contrast to 
which the other substances found in the living body are 
in part raw materials and reserves, and in part of a de- 
rivative nature, or the results of disruptive metabolism. 
Very complex chemically, " biogen " is able to operate 
upon the circulating or reserve " nutritive " materials in 
a way comparable, for instance, to the action of " nitric 
acid in the production of English sulphuric acid." That 
is to say, it is able to set up processes of disruption and of 
recombination, apparently by its mere presence, but, in 
reality, by its own continual breaking down and build- 
ing up again. At the same time it has the power, 

* Max Verworn, "Die Biogenhypothese," Jena, 1903. 6/". criticisms 
by Czapek in the " Botanische Zeitung," No. 2, 1903, and by Loeb in 
the " Biologisches Zentralblatt," 1902. 



THE ORGANIC AND THE INORGANIC 199 

analogous to that of polymerisation in molecules, of 
increasing, of " growing. 1 ' 

The case is the same in regard to physical laws. They 
are identical in the living and the non-living. And 
many of the processes of life have already been analysed 
into a complex of simpler physical processes. The cir- 
culation of the blood is subject to the same laws of 
hydrostatics as are illustrated in all other fluids. 
Mechanical, static, and osmotic processes occur in the 
organism and constitute its vital phenomena. The eye 
is a camera obscura, an optical apparatus ; the ear an 
acoustic instrument ; the skeleton an ingenious system 
of levers, which obey the same laws as all other levers. 
E. du Bois-Reymond, in his lectures on " The Physics 
of Organic Metabolism " (" Physik des organischen 
Stoffwechsels "),* compiles a long and detailed list of 
the physical factors associated and intertwined in 
the most diverse ways with the fundamental pheno- 
menon of life, namely, metabolism : — the capacities 
and effects of solution, diffusion of liquids, capillarity, 
surface tension, coagulation, transfusion with filtration, 
the capacities and effects of gases, aero-diffusion through 
porous walls, the absorption of gases through solid 
bodies and through fluids, and so on. 

Very impressive, too, are the manifold " mechanical " 
interpretations of intimate vital characteristics, such 
as the infinitely fine structure of protoplasm. For 
protoplasm does not fill the cell as a compact 

* Berlin, 1900. Edited by K. du Bois-Reymond. 



200 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



mass, but spreads itself out and builds itself up in 
the most delicate network or meshwork, of which it 
forms the threads and walls, enclosing innumerable 
vacuoles and alveoli, and Butschli succeeded in making 
a surprisingly good imitation of this " structure " by 
mechanical means. Drops of oil intimately mixed 
with potash and placed between glass plates formed 
a very similar emulsion-like or foam-like structure with 
a visible network and with enclosed alveoli. * 

Rhumbler, too, succeeded in explaining by " develop- 
mental mechanics " some of the apparently extremely 
subtle processes at the beginning of embryonic develop- 
ment (the invagination of the blastula to form the 
gastrula) ; by imitating the sphere of cells which com- 
pose the blastula with elastic steel bands he deduced the 
invagination mechanically from the model.f 

Here, too, must be mentioned Verworn's attempts to 
explain " the movements of the living substance." J 
" Kinesis," the power to move, has since the time of 
Aristotle been regarded as one of the peculiar charac- 
teristics of life. From the gliding " amoeboid " move- 
ments of the moneron, with its mysterious power of 
shifting its position, spreading itself out, and spinning 
out long threads (" pseudopodia "), up to the contrac- 

* Butschli, " Untersuchungen uber microscopische Schaume und 
das Protoplasrna," Leipzig, 1892. Cf. Berthold, " Studien zur Proto- 
plasmamechanik." 

\ Rhumbler, " Zur Mechanik des Gastrulationvorganges. . ."in 
" Archiv. f. Entwicklungsmechanik," Bd. 14. 

\ "Bewegung der lebendigen Substanz," Jena, 18 ( J2. 



IRRITABILITY 201 

tility of the muscle-fibre, the same riddle reappears in 
many different forms. Verworn attacks it at the lowest 
level, and attempts to solve it by reference to the 
surface tension to which all fluid bodies are subject, 
and to the partial relaxation of this, which forces the 
mass to give off radiating processes or " pseudopodia." 
The mechanical causes of the suspension of the sur- 
face tension are inquired into, and striking examples of 
pseudopod-like rays are found in the inorganic world, 
for instance, in a drop of oil. Thus a starting-point is 
discovered for mechanical interpretations at a higher 
level.* 

Irritability 

3. A property which seems to be quite peculiar to 
living matter is irritability, or the power of respond- 
ing to " stimuli,"" that is to say., of reacting to some 
influence from without in such a manner that the reac- 
tion is not the mere equivalent of the action, but that 
the stimulus is to the organism as a contingent cause or 
impulse setting up a new process or a new series of 
processes, which seem as though they occurred spon- 

* A short, very attractive description of these mechanical methods, 
and one which appeals particularly to us laymen because of its 
excellent illustrations, is Dreyer's " Ziele und Wege biologischer 
Forschung " (Jena, 1892), especially the first part, " Die Flussig- 
keitsmechanik als eine Grundlage der organischen Form- und 
Geriist-Bildung." The astonishing and fascinating forms of Radio- 
larian frameworks and " skeletons " (the artistic appreciation of 
which was made possible to a wider public by Haeckel's " Kunst- 
formen der Natur") are here made the subject of mechanical 
explanations, which are certainly in a high degree plausible. 



202 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



taneously and freely. Thus the sensitive plant Mimosa 
pudica droops its feathery leaves when touched. Here, 
too, must be classed also all the innumerable phenomena 
of Heliotropism, Geotropism, Rheotropism, Chemotrop- 
ism, and other tropisms, in which the sun, or the earth, or 
currents, or chemical stimuli so affect a form of life — 
plant, alga, or spore — that it disposes its own move- 
ments or the arrangements of its parts accordingly, turn- 
ing towards, or away from, or in an oblique direction 
to the source of stimulus, or otherwise behaving in some 
definite manner which could not have been deduced or 
predicted from the direct effects of the stimulating 
factors. The upholders of the mechanical theory have 
attempted to conquer this vast and mysterious domain 
of facts by seeking to do away with the appearance of 
spontaneity and freedom, by demonstrating in suitable 
cases that these phenomena of spontaneity and the like 
would be impossible were it not that the potential 
energies previously stored up within the organism are 
liberated by the stimulus. Thus the effect caused is 
not equivalent to the stimulus alone, but is rather the 
resultant of the conditions given in the chemo-physical 
predispositions of the organism itself, and in the 
architecture of its parts, plus the stimulus. 

Directly associated with this property of irrita- 
bility is another form of spontaneity and freedom in 
living beings — the power of adapting themselves to 
changed conditions of existence. Some do not show 
this at all, while others show it in an astonishing degree, 



IRRITABILITY 



203 



helping themselves out by new contrivances, so to 
speak. Thus the organism may protect itself against 
temperature and other influences, against inj ury, making 
damages good again by self- repairing processes, 
" regenerating " lost organs, and sometimes even 
building up the whole organism anew from amputated 
parts. The mechanical interpretation must here pro- 
ceed in the same way as in dealing with the question 
of stimuli, applying to the development of form the same 
explanations as are there employed. And just because 
this domain does not lend itself readily to mechanical 
explanation, we can understand that confidence in the 
sufficiency of this mode of interpretation grows rapidly 
with each fresh conquest, when this or that particular 
process is shown to be actually explicable on mechanical 
principles. Processes of development or morphogenesis 
— which are among the most intricate and difficult — are 
attacked in various ways. The processes of regeneration, 
for instance, are compared with the similar tendencies 
observed in crystals, which when they are injured have 
the capacity of restoring their normal form. This 
capacity therefore obtains in the realm of the inorganic 
as well as among organisms, and is referred to the 
tendency of all substances to maintain a definite state of 
equilibrium, conditioned by their form, and, if that is 
disturbed, to return to a similar or a new state of 
equilibrium. Or, the procedure may be to reduce the 
processes of a developmental or morphogenetic cate- 
gory to processes of stimulation in general, and then 



204 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



it is believed, or even demonstrated, that chemo -physical 
analogies or explanations can be found for them. 

Thus, for instance, it is shown that the egg of the 
sea-urchin may be 44 stimulated " to development, not 
exclusively by the fertilising sperm, but even by a simple 
chemical agent, or that spermatozoids which are 
seeking the ovum to be fertilised may be attracted by 
malic acid. These are 44 reductions" 1 of the higher 
phenomena of life to the terms of a lower and simpler 
process of 44 stimulus, 11 that is to say, to chemotropism 
in the second case and something analogous in the first. 
A further reduction would be to show that the move- 
ment of the spermatozoids towards the malic acid is not 
a 44 vitalistic 11 act, much less a psychically conditioned one, 
(that is, conditioned by 44 taste, 11 44 sensation, 11 and the 
voluntary or instinctive impulse liberated thereby), but 
is a chemo-physical process, although perhaps an 
exceedingly complex one. It would be another 
44 reduction 11 of this second kind, if, for instance, the 
well-known effect of light on plants, which makes them 
turn their leaves towards it (heliotropism), could be 
shown to be due to more rapid growth of the leaf on 
the shaded side, which would lift up the leaf and cause 
it to turn, or to an increase of turgescence on the shaded 
side, and if it could be shown that the increase in either 
case was a simple and obvious physical process, the 
necessary consequence of the decreased amount of light. 

It is obvious, and it is also thoroughly justifiable, that 
all attempts along these lines of interpretation should 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 205 

be undertaken in the first place in connection with the 
simplest and lowest forms of life. It is in the inves- 
tigation of the " Protists," the study of the vital 
phenomena of the microscropically minute unicellular 
organisms, that attempts of this kind have been most 
frequently made. And they follow the course we have 
just indicated ; the i 6 apparently " vitalistic and psychical 
behaviour of unicellulars (impulse, will, spontaneous 
movement, selecting and experimenting) is interpreted 
in terms of reflex processes and the " irritability " of 
the cell, and these again are traced back, like all 
stimulus-processes, to the subtle mechanics of the 
atoms. 

Spontaneous Generation 

4. This reduction of known biological phenomena to 
simpler terms, the lessening of the gap between inor- 
ganic and organic chemistry, and the formulation of the 
doctrine of the conservation of energy, have all pre- 
pared the way for a fourth step, the establishment of the 
inevitable theory of generatio spontanea sive equivoca, 
the spontaneous generation of the living, that is to say, 
the gradual evolution of the living from the not living. 
Since the earth, and with it the conditions under which 
alone life is possible, have had a beginning in time, 
life upon the earth must also have had a beginning. 
The assumption that the first living organisms may 
have come to the earth on meteorites simply shifts the 
problem a step farther back, for according to all current 



206 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



theories of the universe, if there are in any of the 
heavenly bodies conditions admitting of the presence of 
life, these conditions have arisen from others in which 
life was impossible. Therefore, since this suggestion is 
on the face of it a mere evasion of the difficulty, the 
theory of spontaneous generation naturally arose. There 
is something almost comical in the change in the 
attitude of the natural sciences to this theory. For 
centuries it was one of the beliefs of popular superstition, 
with its naive way of regarding nature, that earthworms 
44 developed " from damp soil, and vermin from shavings, 
and in general that the living arose from the non-living. 
On the other hand it was one of the characteristics and 
axioms of scientific thought to reject this naive generatio 
equivoca, and to hold fast to the proposition, omne 
vivum ex ovo, or, at least, omne vivum ex vivo. And it 
was regarded as one of the triumphs of modern science 
when, about the middle of the last century, Pasteur 
gave definiteness to this doctrine, and when through 
him, through Virchow, and indeed the whole younger 
generation of naturalists, the proposition was modified, 
on the basis of the newly discovered cell-theory, to 
omnis cellula ex cellula. But a short time after Pasteur's 
discoveries, the ideas of Darwinism and the theory of 
evolution gained widespread acceptance. And now it 
appeared that, in rejecting the theory of generatio 
equivoca , naturalists had, so to speak, sawn off the 
branch on which they desired to sit, and thus 
many, like Haeckel, became enthusiastic converts to 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 



207 



the theory which natural science had previously re- 
jected. 

Constructing theories and speculations as to the 

possibilities of spontaneous generation is regarded by 

some naturalists as somewhat gratuitous (cf. Du Bois- 

Reymond). In general, it is regarded as sufficient to 

point out that the reduction of the phenomena of life as 

we know them to those of a simpler order, and the 

unification of organic and inorganic chemistry, have 

made the problem of the first origin of life essentially 

simpler, and that the law of the constancy and identity of 

energy throughout the universe permits no other theory. 

But others go more determinedly to work, and attempt 

to give concrete illustrations of the problem. The 

most elementary form of life known to us is the cell. 

From cells and their combinations, their products and 

secretions, all organisms, plant and animal alike, are 

built up. If we succeed in deriving the cell, the 

derivation of the whole world of life seems, with the 

help of the doctrine of descent, a comparatively simple 

matter. The cell itself seems to stand nearer to the 

inorganic, and to be less absolutely apart from the 

inanimate world than a highly organised bodv, 

differentiated as to its functions and organs, such as a 

mammal. It almost seems as if we might regard the 

© © 

lowest forms of life known to us, which seem little 
more than aggregated homogeneous masses of flowing 

BO © © © 

rather than creeping protoplasm, as an intermediate 
link between the higher forms of life and the non- 



208 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



living. But the theory does not begin with the cell ; 
it assumes a series of connecting-links (which may of 
course be as long and as complicated as the series from 
the cell upwards to man) between the cell and matter 
which is still quite < 4 inorganic " and which is capable 
only of the everyday chemical and physical phenomena, 
and not of the higher syntheses of these, which in their 
increasing complexity and diversity ultimately come to 
represent "life " in its most primitive forms. As 
proteid is the chief constituent of protoplasm, it is 
regarded as the specific physical basis of life, and life is 
looked upon as the sum of its functions. And it is 
not doubted that, if the conditions of the universe 
brought about a natural combination of carbon, hydro- 
gen, nitrogen and oxygen in certain proportions, so 
that proteid resulted, the transition to proteid which 
forms itself and renews itself from the surrounding 
elements, to assimilating, growing, dividing proteid, 
and ultimately to the most primitive plasmic structure, 
to non-nucleated, nucleated, and finally fully formed 
cells, could also come about. 

HaeckePs demonstration of the possibility of spon- 
taneous generation is along these lines. He refers to 
the cytodes, the blood corpuscles, to alleged or actual 
non-nucleated cells, to bacteria, to the simplest forms 
of cell-structure, as proofs of the possibility of a 
descending series of connecting-links. He (and with 
him Nageli) calls these links, below the level of the cell, 
Probia or Probions, and for a time he believed that he 



MECHANICS OF DEVELOPMENT 



209 



had discovered in Bathybius Haeckeli presently existing 
homogeneous living masses, without cell division, nucleus 
or structure, the "primitive slime " which apparently 
existed in the abysmal depths of the ocean to this day. 
Unfortunately, this primitive slime soon proved itself 
an illusion. 

Opinions differ as to whether spontaneous genera- 
tion took place only in the beginning of evolution, or 
whether it occurred repeatedly and is still going on. 
Most naturalists incline to the former idea ; Nageli 
champions the latter. There are also differences of 
opinion as to whether the origin of life from the non- 
living was manifold, and took place at many different 
places on the earth, or whether all the forms of life 
now in existence have arisen from a common source 
(monophyletic and polyphyletic theories). 

The Mechanics of Development 

5. The minds of the supporters of the mechanical 
theory had still to move along a fifth line in order to 
solve the riddle of the development of the living 
individual from the egg, or of the germ to its finished 
form, the riddle of morphogenesis. They cannot 
assume the existence of "the whole" before the part, 
or equip it with the idea of the thing as a spiritus 
rector, playing the part of a metaphysical controlling 
agency. Here as elsewhere they must demonstrate the 
existence of purely mechanical principles. It is simply 
from the potential energies inherent in its constituent 

o 



210 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



parts that the supply of energy must flow, by means of 
which the germ is able to make use of inorganic 
material from without, to assimilate it and increase its 
own substance, and, by using it up, to maintain and 
increase its power of work, to break up the carbonic 
acid of the atmosphere and to gain the carbon which is 
so important for its vital functions, to institute and 
organise the innumerable chemico-physical processes by 
means of which its form is built up. Purely as a 
consequence of the chemico-physical nature of the 
germ, of the properties of the substances included in it 
on the one hand, and of the implicit structure and 
configuration of its parts, down to the intrinsic specific 
undulatory rhythm of its molecules, it must follow 
that its mass grows exactly as it does, and not other- 
wise, that it behaves as it does and not otherwise, 
duplicating itself by division after division, and by 
intricate changes arranging and rearranging the results 
of division until the embryo or larva, and finally the 
complete organism, is formed. 

An extraordinary amount of ingenuity has been ex- 
pended in this connection, in order to avoid here, where 
perhaps it is most difficult of all, the use of "teleo- 
logical" principles, and to remain faithful to the ortho- 
dox, exclusively mechanical mode of interpretation. To 
this category belong Darwin's gemmules, HaeckePs 
plastidules,Nageirs micellae, Weismann , s labyrinth of ids, 
determinants, and biophors within the germ -plasm, and 
Roux's ingenious hypothesis of the struggle of parts, 



HEREDITY 



211 



which is an attempt to apply the Darwinian principle 
within the organism in order here also to rebut the 
teleological interpretation by giving a scientific one.* 

Heredity 

6. With this fifth line of thought a sixth is associated 
and intertwined. The problem of development is 
closely bound up with that of " heredity." A develop- 
ing organism follows the parental type. The acorn in 
its growth follows the type of the parent oak, repeating 
all its morphological and physiological characters down 
to the most intimate detail. And the animal organism 
adds to this also the whole psychical equipment, the 
instincts, the capacities of will and consciousness which 
distinguish its parents. The problems of the fifth and 
sixth order are closely inter-related, the sixth problem 
being in reality the same as the fifth, only in greater 
complexity. 

A step towards the mechanical solution of this 
problem was indicated in the " preformation theory ™ 
advanced by Leibnitz, and elaborated by Bonnet. 
According to this theory the developing organism is 
enclosed in the minutest possible form within the egg, 
and is thus included in the parental organism, in 
miniature indeed, but quite complete. Thus the prob- 
lem of the " development of form " or of " heredity 11 

* Cf. Roux, "Archiv. fur Entwicklungsmechauik." The name 
sufficient!}" indicates the scope. 



212 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



was, so to speak, ruled out of court ; all that was 
assumed was continuous growth and self-unfolding. 

Opposed to this theory was one of later growth, 
the theory of epigenesis, which maintained that the 
organism developed without preformation from the still 
undifferentiated and homogeneous substance of the egg. 
The supporters of the first theory considered them- 
selves much more scientific and exact than those of 
the second. And not without reason. For the theory 
of epigenesis obviously required mysterious formative 
principles, and equally mysterious powers of recollection 
and recapitulation, which impelled the undifferentiated 
ovum substance into the final form, precisely like 
that of its ancestors. Nor need the preformationists 
have greatly feared the reproach, that the parental 
organism must have been included within the grand- 
parental, and so on backwards to the first parents in 
Paradise. For this u Chinese box " encapsulement 
theory only requires that we should grant the idea of the 
infinitely little, and that idea is already an integral 
part of our thinking. 

Modern biologists ridicule the preformation hypo- 
thesis as altogether too artificial. And undoubtedly it 
founders on the facts of embryology, which disclose 
nothing to suggest the unfolding of a pre-existent 
miniature model, but show us how the egg-cell divides 
into two, into four, and so on, with continued multi- 
plication followed by varied arrangements and rearrange- 
ments of cells — in short, all the complex changes which 



HEREDITY 



213 



constitute development. But a preformation in some 
sense or other there must be ; — some peculiar material 
predisposition of the germ, which, as such, supplies the 
directing principle for the development, and the suffi- 
cient reason for the repetition of the parental form. 
This is of such obvious importance from the mechanical 
point of view that the speculations of to-day tend to 
move along the old preformationist lines. To these 
modern preformationists are opposed the modern up- 
holders of epigenesis or gradual differentiation, who 
attempt to elaborate a mechanical theory of develop- 
ment. And with the contrast between these two schools 
there is necessarily associated the discussion as to the 
inheritance or non-inheritance of acquired characters. 

Darwin's contribution to the problem of the sixth 
order was his rather vague theory of " Pangenesis. 1 ' 
The living organism, according to him, forms in its 
various organs, parts, and cells exceedingly minute 
particles of living matter (gemmules), which, " in some 
way or other," bear within them the special charac- 
teristics of the part in which they are produced. These 
may wander through the organism and meet in the 
germ-plasm, and then, when a child-organism is pro- 
duced, they ** swarm," so to speak, in it again " in some 
way or other," and in some fashion control the develop- 
ment. This gem mule-theory was too obviously a quid 
pro quo to hold its ground for long. Various theories 
were elaborated, and the world of the invisibly minute 
was flooded with speculations. 



214 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



The most subtle of these, on the side of consistent 
Darwinism, is that of Weismann, a pronounced pre- 
formation theory which has been increasingly refined 
and elaborated in the course of years of reflection. 
According to Weismann, the individual parts and 
characteristics of the organism are represented in the 
germ-plasm, not in finished form, but as "determi- 
nants v in a definite system which is itself the directing 
principle in the building up of the bodily system, and 
with definite characteristics, which determine the pecu- 
liarities of the individual organs and parts, down to 
scales, hairs, skin-spots, and birth-marks. As the germ- 
cells have the power of growth, and can increase 
endlessly by dividing and re-dividing, and as each 
process of division takes place in such a way that each 
half (each product of division) maintains the previous 
system, there arise innumerable germ-cells corresponding 
to one another, from which, therefore, corresponding 
bodies must arise (inheritance). It is not in reality the 
newly developed bodies which give rise to new germ- 
cells and transfer to them something of their own cha- 
racters; the germ-cells of the child-organism develop 
from that of the parent (" immortality " of the germ- 
cells). Therefore there can be no inheritance of acquired 
characters, and no modifications of type through external 
causes ; and all variations which appear in a series of 
generations are due solely to internal variations in the 
germ-cells, whether brought about by the complication 
of their system through the fusion of the male and 



HEREDITY 



215 



female germ-cells, or through differences in the growth of 
the individual determinants themselves. The numerous 
subsidiary theses interwoven in Weismann's theory are 
entirely coherent, and have been thought out to their 
conclusions with praiseworthy determination.* To the 
theory as a whole, because of its fundamental conception 
of preformation, and to its subsidiary hypotheses, piece 
by piece, there has been energetic opposition on the 
part of the upholders of the modern mechanical theory 
of epigenesis. This opposition is most concretely and 
comprehensively expressed in Haacke^ " Gestaltung und 
Vererbung." The infinitely complex intricacy of Weis- 
mann's minute microcosm within the germ-cell, indeed 
within every id in it, is justly described as a mere 
duplication, a repetition in the infinitely little of the 
essential difficulties to be explained. The complicated 
processes of developing in the growing and inheriting 
organism cannot be explained, they say, in terms of 
processes of the equally complex and likewise developing 
germ-plasm. The complex, if it is to be explained at 
all, must be explained by the simple — in this case by 
the functions of a homogeneous uniform plasm. 

At an earlier date Haeckel had made an attempt in 
this direction in his theory of the " perigenesis of the 
plastidules." Peculiar states of oscillation and rhythm 
in the molecules of the germ-substance, handed on to it 
from the parent organism and transferable to all the 

* For a discussion of the difficulties and impossibilities of this 
theory see page 148 above. 



216 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

assimilated matter of the offspring, represent, accord- 
ing to this theory, the principle which impels de- 
velopment to follow a particular course corresponding 
to the type of the parents. This was a physical way 
of interpreting the matter. Other investigators have 
given a chemical expression to their theoretical schemes 
for explaining heredity. 

Haacke declares both these to be unsatisfactory, and 
replaces them by morphological formative principles. 
It is the structure of the otherwise homogeneous living 
matter that explains morphogenesis and inheritance. 
Minute " gemma?," homogeneous fundamental particles 
of living substance, not to be compared to or confused 
with Darwin's " gemmules," are aggregated in " Gem- 
maria," whose configuration, stability, symmetrical or 
asymmetrical structure, and so on, are determined by 
the relative positions of the gemmae to each other, and 
these in their turn control the organism and give it a 
corresponding symmetrical or asymmetrical, a firmly 
or loosely aggregated structure. The completed organ- 
ism then forms a system in organic equilibrium, which 
is constantly exposed to variations and influences due 
to external causes (St. Hilaire), and to use and disuse 
of organs (Lamarck). These influences affect the struc- 
ture of the gemmaria, and as the germ-cells consist 
of gemmaria, like those of the rest of the organism, 
the possibility of the transmission of acquired new 
characters is self-evident. The importance of corre- 
lated growth and orthogenesis is explained on a similar 



HEREDITY 



basis, and the Darwinian conceptions of the independent 
variation of individual parts, of the exclusive dominance 
of utility, of the influence of the struggle for existence 
in regard to individual selection, and of the omnipotence 
of natural selection, are energetically denied. 

Oscar Hertwig,* de Vries, Driesch f and others 
attempt to reconcile the preformationist and the epi- 
genetic standpoints, and " to extract what is good and 
usable out of both.' 1 Hertwig and Driesch, however, 
can only be mentioned with reservations in this con- 
nection. 

We cannot better sum up the whole tendency of the 
construction of mechanical theories on these last lines 
than in the words of Schwann : " There is within the 
organism no fundamental force working according to 
a definite idea ; it arises in obedience to the blind laws 
of necessity." 

So much for the different lines followed by the 
mechanical theories of to-day. An idea of their general 
tenor can be gained from a series of much quoted 
general treatises, of which we must mention at least 
the " classics. 11 In Wagner's " Handworterbuch der 
Physiologic," 1842, Vol. I., Lotze wrote a long intro- 
ductory article to the whole work, on " Life and Vital 

* "Preformation oder Epigenesis ? " Outlines of a theory of the 
development of organisms. Jena, 1894. (Part I. of i; Zeit- und Streit- 
fragen der Biologie.") Translated by P. Chalmers Mitchell, " The 
Biological Problem of To-day." 

t In his earlier period. Later he rejects both preformation and 
epigenesis. a? mechanical distortions of vital processes. 



218 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Force.'" It was the challenge of the newer views to the 
previously vitalistic standpoint, and at the same time 
it was based on Lotze's general principles and inter- 
spersed with philosophical criticism of the concepts of 
force, cause, effect, law, &c* A similar train of ideas 
to Lotze's is followed to-day by 0. Hertwig, especially 
in his " Mechanismus und Biologic" f Lighter and 
more elegant was the polemic against vital force, and 
the outline of a mechanical theory which Du Bois- 
Reymond prefaced to his great work, " Untersuchungen 
uber die tierische Electricitat " (1849). It did not go 
nearly so deep as Lotze's essay, but perhaps for that 
very reason its phrases and epigrams soon became 
common property. We may recall how he speaks of 
vital force as a " general servant for everybody," of the 
iron atom which remains the same whether it be in the 
meteorite in cosmic space, in the wheel of the railway 
carriage, or in the blood of the thinker, and of analytic 
mechanics which may be applied even to the problem of 
personal freedom. 

The most comprehensive and detailed elaboration of 
the mechanical theory of life is to be found in Herbert 
Spencer's "Principles of Biology." J Friedrich Albert 
Lange's " History of Materialism " is a brilliant plea for 
mechanical theories, § which he afterwards surpassed and 

* See also Lotze's interesting article " Instinct " in the same 
work. 

f Part II. of his "Zeit- und Streit-fragen der Biologic" 
X Second Edition, 1902. 
§ In Vol. II. p. 139. 1898. 



HEREDITY 



219 



neutralised by his Kantian Criticism. Verworn, too, in his 
6 1 Physiology " * gives a clear example of the way in which 
the mechanical theory in its most consistent form is 
sublimed, apparently in the idealism of Kant and Fichte, 
but in reality in its opposite — the Berkeleyan psy- 
chology. x\ similar outcome is in various ways indicated 
in the modern trend of things. 

* " General Physiology." Translated by Lee. London. 1899. 
P. 170. 



CHAPTER IX 



CEITICISM OF MECHANICAL THEORIES 

In attempting to define our attitude to the mechanical 
theory of life, we have first of all to make sure that we 
have a right to take up a definite position at all. We 
should have less right, or perhaps none, if this theory of 
life were really of a purely " biological " nature, built 
up entirely from the expert knowledge and data which 
the biologist alone possesses. But the principles, as- 
sumptions, supplementary ideas and modes of expression 
along all the six lines we have discussed, the style and 
method according to which the hypothesis is con- 
structed^ the multitude of separate presuppositions 
with which it works, and indeed everything that helps 
to build up and knit the biological details into a scien- 
tific hypothesis, are the materials of rational synthesis 
in general, and as such are subject to general as well 
as to biological criticism. What is there, for instance, 
in Weismanns ingenious biophor-theory that can be 
called specifically biological, and not borrowed from 
other parts of the scientific system ? 

One advantage, indeed, the biologist always has in 
this matter, apart from his special knowledge ; that is, 



MECHANICAL THEORIES CRITICISED 221 

the technical instinct, the power of scenting out, so to 
speak, and immediately feeling the importance of the 
facts pertaining to his own discipline. It is this that 
gives ever}' specialist the advantage over the layman in 
dealing with the data of his own subject. This power 
of instinctively appraising facts, which develops in the 
course of all special work, can, for instance in hypotheses 
in the domain of history, transform small details, which 
to the layman seem trivial, into weighty arguments. 
Similarly it may be that the success of the mechanical 
interpretation in regard to isolated processes may make 
its validity for many other allied processes certain, even 
though there is no precise proof of this. But we 
cannot regard this as a final demonstration of the 
applicability of the mechanical theory, since the same 
technical instinct in other experts leads them to reject 
the whole hypothesis. 

But here we are met with something surprising. May 
it not be that while we are impelled on general grounds 
to contend against the mechanical interpretaton of vital 
phenomena, we are not so impelled on religious grounds ? 
May it not be that the instinct of the religious con- 
sciousness is misleading when it impels us — as probably 
every one will be able to certify from his own experience 
— to rebel against this mechanisation of life, the 
mechanical solution of its mysteries ? Lotze, the 
energetic antagonist of " vital force,"" the founder of 
the mechanical theory of vital processes, was himself a 
theist, and was so far from recognising any contradiction 



222 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



between the mechanical point of view and the Christian 
belief in God, that he included the former without 
ceremony in his theistic philosophical speculations. 
His view has become that of many theologians, and is 
often expressed in a definition of the boundaries between 
theology and natural science. According to the idea 
which was formulated by Lotze, and developed by 
others along his lines, the matter is quite simple. The 
interest which religion has in the processes of nature is 
at once and exclusively to be found in teleology. Are 
there purposes, plans, and ideas which govern and give 
meaning to the whole ? The interest of natural science 
is purely in recognising inviolable causality ; every 
phenomenon must have its compelling and sufficient 
reason in the system of causes preceding it. All that 
is and happens is absolutely determined by its causes, 
and nothing, no causae finales for instance, can co- 
operate with these causes in determining the result. 
But, as Lotze says, and as we have repeatedly pointed 
out, causal explanation does not exclude a consideration 
from the point of view of purpose, and the mechanical 
interpretation does not do so either. For this is nothing 
more than the causal explanation itself, only carried to 
complete consistency and definiteness. Purposes and 
ideas are not efficient causes but results. Where, for 
instance, there is a controlled purposive occurrence, the 
" purpose " nowhere appears as a factor co-operating 
with the series of causes, for these follow according to 
strict law, and the " purpose " reveals itself at the close 



MECHANICAL THEORIES CRITICISED 223 



of the series, as the result of a closed causal nexus, 
complete in itself, always provided that the initial links 
in the chain have been accurately estimated. The same 
is true of the processes of life. They are the ultimate 
result, strictly necessary and sufficiently accounted for 
in terms of mechanical sequence, of a long chain of 
causes whose initial links imply a definite constitution 
which could not be further reduced. Whether this 
ultimate result is merely a result or whether it is also a 
" purpose " is a question which, as we have seen twice 
already, it is wholly beyond the power of the causal 
mode of interpretation to answer. Given that an 
infinite intelligence in the world wished to realise 
purposes without instituting them as directly accom- 
plished, but by letting them express themselves through 
a gradual " becoming," the method would be exactly 
what is shown in the mechanical theory of life, that is, 
the primitive data and starting-points would have 
inherent in them a peculiar constitution and a rigidly 
inexorable orderliness of causal sequence. And Lotze 
emphasises that it would also be worthier of God 
to achieve the greatest by means of the simplest, and to 
work out the realisation of His eternal purposes accord- 
ing to the strict inevitableness of mechanism, than to 
attain His ends through the complicated means, the 
adventitious aids, and all the irregularities implied 
in the incommensurable activities of a " vital force." 
(" God needs no minor gods.") 

To Lotze himself these original data and starting- 



224 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

points are the primitive forms of life, which, according 
to his view, are directly " given," and cannot be referred 
back to anything else (except to " creation"). But it 
is obvious that his view can be enlarged and extended 
so as to refer the derivation of the whole animate world 
to the original raw materials of the cosmos (energy, 
matter, or whatsoever they may be), and to the orderly 
process by which these materials were combined in 
various configurations to form the chemical elements, 
the chemical compounds, living proteids, the first cell, 
and the whole series of higher forms. If this nexus has 
taken place, it is nothing else than the transformation 
of the " potential " into the " actual " through strict 
causality. And if this actuality proves itself to have 
claims, because of its own intrinsic worth, to be con- 
sidered as intelligent " purpose," the whole system of 
means, including the starting-point, can be recognised 
as the means to an end, and the original wisdom and 
the intelligence which ordained the purpose is only 
glorified the more through the great simplicity, the 
rational comprehensibility, and the inexorable necessity 
of the system, which excludes all chance, and therewith 
all possibility of error. 

This extension of Lotze's reconciliation of the 
mechanical causal with the teleological point of view 
is impressive and, as far as it goes, also quite convin- 
cing. It will never be given up, even if the point of 
view should change somewhat. And we have already 
seen that it is quite sufficient as long as we are dealing 



MECHANICAL THEORIES CRITICISED 225 

only with the question of teleology. But wc must ask 
whether religion will be satisfied with " teleology " 
alone, or whether this is even the first requirement 
that it makes in regard to natural phenomena. We 
have already asked the question and attempted to clear 
the ground for an answer. Let us try to make it more 
definite. 

Many people will have a certain uneasiness in regard 
to the Lotzian ideas ; they will be unable to rid them- 
selves of a feeling that this way of looking at things 
is only a pis aller for the religious point of view, and 
that the fundamental requirements of religious feeling 
receive very inadequate satisfaction on this method. 
The world of life which has arisen thus is altogether 
too rational and transparent. It is calculable and 
mathematical. It satisfies well enough the need for 
teleology, and with that the need for a supreme, 
universally powerful and free intelligence ; but it gives 
neither support nor nourishment to the essential 
element in religious feeling, through which alone faith 
becomes in the strict sense religious. Religion, even 
Christian religion, is, so to speak, a stratified structure, 
a graduated pyramid, expressing itself, at its second 
(and undoubtedly higher) level, in our recognition of 
purpose, the rationality of the world, our own spiritual 
and personal being and worth, but implying at its 
basis an inward sense of the mysterious, a joy in that 
which is incommensurable and unspeakable, which fills 
us with awe and devotion. And religion at the second 

p 



226 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



stage must not sweep away the essence of the stage 
below, but must include it, at the same time informing 
it with new significance. Whoever does not possess his 
religion in this way will agree with, and will be quite 
satisfied with the Lotzian standpoint. But to any one 
who has experience of the most characteristic element 
in religion, it will be obvious that there must be a 
vague but deep-rooted antipathy between religion and 
the mathematical-mechanical conception of things. 
Evidence of the truth of this is to be found in the 
instinctive perceptions and valuations which mark even 
the naive expressions of the religious consciousness.* 
For it is in full sympathy with a world which is riddled 
with what is inconceivable and incommensurable, in full 
sympathy with every evidence of the existence of such 
an element in the world of nature and mind, and there- 
fore with every proof that the merely mechanical theory 
has its limits, that it does not suffice, and that its very 
insufficiency is a proof that the world is and remains in 
its depths mysterious. Now we have already said that 
the true sphere for such feeling is not the outer court 

* As a remarkable instance and corroboration of this, we may- 
refer to the ever-recurring, instinctive antipathy of deeply religious 
temperaments, from Augustine to Luther and Schleiermacher, to the 
Aristotelian mood and its conception of the world, and their sym- 
pathy with Plato's (mostly and especially in their " Platonised " 
expressions). The clear-cut, luminous, conception of the world 
which expresses everything in terms of commensurable concepts is 
thoroughly Aristotelian. But it would be difficult to find a place in 
it for the peculiar element which lies at the root of all true devotional 
feeling, and which makes faith something more than the highest 
"reverence, love and trust." 



MECHANICAL THEORIES CRITICISED 227 



of nature, but within the realm of the emotional life 
and of history, and, on the other hand, that even if 
the attempt to trace life back to the simpler forces of 
nature were successful, we should still be confronted 
with the riddle of the sphinx. But any one who would 
say frankly what he felt would at once be obliged to 
admit that the religious sense is very strongly stirred 
by the mystery of vital phenomena, and that in 
losing this he would lose a domain very dear to him. 
These sympathies and antipathies are in themselves 
sufficient to give an interest to the question of the 
insufficiency of the mechanical view of things. 

For it is by no means the case that the mechanical 
theory, with its premisses and principles, is the in- 
terpretation that best fits the facts, and that most 
naturally arises out of a calm consideration of the 
animate world. It is an artificial scheme, and astonish- 
ing energy has been expended on the attempt to fit it 
to the actual world, that it may make this orderly and 
translucent. It certainly yields this service so far, but 
not without often becoming a kind of strait -jacket, and 
revealing itself as an artificiality. In so far as the 
special problems of biology are concerned, we shall 
afterwards follow our previous method of taking our 
orientation from those specialists in the subject who, 
in reaction from the one-sidedness of the mechanical 
doctrine, have founded the " neo-vitalism " of to-day. 
Here we are only concerned with the generalities and 
presuppositions of the theory. 



228 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



We must dispute even the main justification of the 
theory, which is sought for in the old maxim of parsi- 
mony in the use of principles of explanation (entia, and 
also principia, prceter necessitatem non esse multipli- 
canda), and in Kant's "regulative principle,'" that 
science must proceed as if everything could ultimately 
be explained in terms of mechanism. For surely our 
task is to try to explain things, not at any cost with the 
fewest possible principles, but rather with the aid of 
those principles which appear most correct. If nature 
is not fundamentally simple, then it is not scientific but 
unscientific to simplify it theoretically. And the pro- 
position bracketed above has its obvious converse side, 
that while entities and principles must not be multi- 
plied except when it is necessary, on the other hand 
their number must not be arbitrarily lessened. To 
proceed according to the fundamental maxims of the 
mechanistic view can only be wholesome for a time and, 
so to speak, for pedagogical reasons. To apply them 
seriously and permanently would be highly injurious, 
for, by prejudging what is discoverable in nature, it 
would tend to prevent the calm, objective study of things 
which asks for nothing more than to see them as they are. 
It would thus destroy the fineness of our appreciation 
of what there really is in nature. This is true alike of 
forcible attempts to reduce the processes of life to 
mechanical processes, and of the Darwinian doctrine of 
the universal dominance of utility. Both bear unmis- 
takably the stamp of foregone conclusions, and betray 



MECHANICAL THEORIES CRITICISED 229 

a desire for the simplest, rather than for the most 
correct principles of interpretation. 

There is one point which presses itself on the notice 
even of outsiders, and is probably realised even more 
keenly by specialists. The confidence of the supporters 
of the mechanical theories of earlier days, from 
Descartes onward, that animals and the bodies of men 
were machines, mechanical automata, down to the 
mechanical theories of Lamettrie and Holbach, of 
Vhomme machine, and of the systeme de la nature, was at 
least as great as, probably greater than, that of the sup- 
porters of the modern theories. Yet how naive and 
presumptuous seem the crude and wooden theories upon 
which the mechanical system was formerly built up, and 
how falsely interpreted seem the physiological and other 
facts which lent them support, when seen in the light 
of our modern physiological knowledge. Vaucanson's 
or Drozsch's duck-automaton or clockwork-man, with 
which the mechanical theorists of bygone days amused 
themselves, would not go far to encourage the physio- 
logist of to-day to pursue his mechanical studies, but 
would rather throw a vivid light on the impossibility of 
comparing the living " machine " with machines in the 
usual sense. For things emphatically do not happen 
within the living organism in the same way as in the 
automatic duck, and the more exact the resemblance 
to the functions of a "real " duck became, the more did 
the system of means by which the end was attained be- 
come unlike vital processes. It is difficult to resist the 



230 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



impression that in another hundred years, — perhaps 
again from the standpoint of new and definitely 
accepted mechanical explanations, — people will regard 
our developmental mechanics, cellular mechanics, and 
other vital mechanics much in the same way as we 
now look on Vaucanson's duck. 

Associated or even identical with this is the fact 
that in proportion as mechanical interpretation advances, 
the difficulties it has to surmount continually crop 
up anew. Processes which seem of the simplest kind 
and the most likely to be capable of purely mechanical 
explanation, processes such as those of assimilation, 
digestion, respiration, for which it was believed that 
exact parallels existed in the purely mechanical 
domain, as, for instance, in the osmotic processes of 
porous membranes, are seen when closely scrutinised as 
they occur in the living body to be extremely complex ; 
in fact they have to be transferred " provisionally " from 
the mechanical to the vital rubric. To this category 
belong the whole modern development of the cell-theory, 
which replaces the previously single mechanism in the 
living body by millions of them, every one of which 
raises as many problems as the one had done in the 
days of cruder interpretation. Every individual cell, 
as it appears to our understanding to-day, is at least as 
complicated a riddle as the whole organism formerly 
appeared. 

But further : the modern development of biology 
has emphasised a special problem, which was first formu- 



MECHANICAL THEORIES CRITICISED 231 



lated by Leibnitz (though it is in antithesis to his fun- 
damental Monad- theory), and which appears incapable 
of solution on mechanical lines. Leibnitz declared living 
beings to be " machines," but machines of a peculiar 
kind. Even the most complicated machine, in the 
ordinary sense, consists of a combination of smaller 
" machines," that is to say, of wheels, systems of levers, 
&c., of a simpler kind. And these sub-machines may 
in their turn consist of still simpler ones, and so on. 
But ultimately a stage is reached when the com- 
ponent parts are homogeneous, and cannot be analysed 
into simpler machines. It is otherwise with the organ- 
ism. According to Leibnitz it consists of machines 
made up of other machines, and so on, into the infinitely 
little. However far we can proceed in our analysis 
of the parts, we shall still find that they are syntheses, 
made up of most ingeniously complex component 
parts, and this as far as our powers of seeing and dis- 
tinguishing will carry us. That is to say : organisation 
is continued on into the infinitely little. 

Leibnitz's illustration of the fish-pond is well known. 
He could have no better corroboration of his theory 
than the results of modern investigation afford. His 
doctrine of the continuation of organisation downwards 
into ever smaller expression is confirmed to a certain 
extent even by anatomy. By analysing structural 
organisation down to cells a definite point seemed to 
have been reached. But it now appears that at that point 
the problem is only beginning. One organisation is made 



232 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

up of other organisations — cells, protoplasm, nucleus, 
nucleolus, centrosomes, and so on, according to the 
power of the microscope ; and these structures, instead 
of explaining the vital functions of growth, develop- 
ment, multiplication by division, and the rest, simply 
repeat them on a smaller scale, and are thus in their 
turn living units, the aggregation of which is illus- 
trated better by the analogy of a social organism than 
by that of a mechanical structure. 

In order to follow the mechanical explanation along 
the six lines we have previously indicated, we shall, as 
we have already said, entrust ourselves to the specialists 
who are on the opposite side. The difficulties and 
objections which the mechanical theory has to face 
have forced themselves insistently upon us even in the 
course of a short sketch such as has just been given, 
but they will be clearly realised if we approach them 
from the other side. But, first of all, a word as to the 
fundamental and, it is alleged, unassailable doctrine on 
which the theory as a whole is based, the " law of the 
conservation of energy."" Tho appeal to this, at any 
rate in the way in which it is usually made, is apt to be 
so distorted that the case must first be clearly stated 
before we can get further with the discussion. 

The Law of the Conservation of Energy 

Helmholtz's proof established mathematically what 
Kant had already, by direct insight, advanced as an 
a priori fundamental axiom : that in any given system 



CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 233 

the sum of energy can neither increase (impossibility of 
a perpefuum mobile) nor diminish (there is no disappear- 
ance of energy, but only transformation into another 
form). But even the vitalist had no need to deny this 
proposition. The " energy" which is required for the 
work of directing, setting agoing, changing and rear- 
ranging the cheinico-phvsieal processes in the body, and 
bringing about the effective reactions to stimuli which 
result in "development,"" transmission," "'regeneration," 
and so on — if indeed any energy is required — of course 
could not come " from within" as a spontaneous increase 
of the existing sum of energy — that would, indeed, be a 
magical becoming out of nothing ! — but must naturally 
be thought of as coming "'from without." The appeal 
to the law of the conservation of energy is therefore in 
itself irrelevant : but it conceals behind it an assertion 
of a totally different kind, namely, that in relation to 
physico-chemical sequences there can be no " with- 
out," nothing transcending them — an assertion which 
Helmholtz's arguments cannot and were never in- 
tended to establish, But before any definite atti- 
tude to this newly imported assertion could be taken 
up. it would require to be distinctly defined, and that 
would lead us at once into all the depths of epistemo- 
logical discussion. Here, therefore, we can only say so 
much : If this assertion is accepted it is well to see 
where it carries us : namely, back to the first-described 
naive standpoint, which, without critical scruples, quite 
seriously accepts the world as it appears to it for the 



234 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

reality, and quite seriously speaks of an infinity lying 
in time behind us — and therefore come to an end— and 
is not in the least disturbed from its " dogmatic 
slumber " by this or any of the other great antinomies 
of our conception of the universe. And it remains, 
too, for this standpoint to come to terms with the fact 
that, in voluntary actions, of which we have the most 
direct knowledge, we have through our will the power 
of intervention in the physico-chemical nexus of our 
bodily energies — a fact which implies the existence of 
a " without," from which interpolations or influences 
may flow into the physico-chemical system, even if 
there be none in regard to the domain of ' 4 vital 11 
phenomena. And we should require to find out 
through what parallelistic or abruptly idealistic system 
the u without " was done away with in this case. For 
if a transcendental basis, or reverse side, or cause of 
things, be admitted — even if only in the form of our 
materialistic popular metaphysics (the " substance " of 
HaeckeFs " world-riddle ") — then a " without," from 
which primarily the cosmic system with its constant 
sum of matter and energy is explained, is also ad- 
mitted, and it is difficult to see why it should have 
exhausted itself in this single effort. 

Criticisms of the Mechanistic Theory of Life 

The course of the mechanistic theory of life has been 
surprisingly similar to that of its complement, the 
theory of the general evolution of the organic world. 



MECHANISTIC THEORY CRITICISED 235 



The two great doctrines of the schools. Darwinism on 
the one hand, the mechanical interpretation of life on 
the other, are both tottering, not because of the criti- 
cism of outsiders, but of specialists within the schools 
themselves. And the interest which religion has in 
this is the same in both cases : the transcendental 
nature of things, the mysterious depth of appearance, 
which these theories denied or obscured, become again 
apparent. The incommensurableness and mystery of 
the world, which are, perhaps, even more necessary to 
the very life of religion than the right to regard it 
teleologically, reassert themselves afresh in the all-too- 
comprehensible and mathematically-formulated world, 
and re-establish themselves, notwithstanding obstinate 
and persistent attempts to do away with them. This 
is perhaps to the advantage of both natural science 
and religion : to the advantage of religion because 
it can with difficulty co-exist with the universal domi- 
nance of the mathematical way of looking at things ; 
to the advantage of natural science because, in giving 
up the one-sidedness of the purely quantitative outlook, 
it does not give up its M foundations," its " right to 
exist," but onlv a petitio princlpii and a prejudice that 
compelled it to exploit nature rather than to explain 
it, and to prescribe its ways rather than to seek them 
out. 

The reaction from the one-sided mechanical theories 
shows itself in manv different ways and degrees. It 
may, according to the individual naturalist, affect the 



236 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



theory as a whole, or only certain parts of it, or only 
particular lines. It starts with mere criticism and with 
objections, which go no further than saying that " in 
the meantime " we are still far from having reached a 
physico-chemical solution of the riddle of life ; it may 
ascend through all stages up to an absolute rejection of 
the theory as an idiosyncrasy of the time which impedes 
the progress of investigation, and as an uncritical pre- 
judice of the schools. It may remain at the level of mere 
protest, and content itself with demonstrating the 
insufficiency of the mechanical explanation, without 
attempting to formulate any independent theory for 
the domain of the vital ; or it may construct a specifically 
biological theory, claiming independence amid other 
disciplines, and basing this claim on the autonomy 
of vital processes ; or it may widen out deliberately 
into metaphysical study and speculation. Taken at all 
these levels it presents such a complete section of the 
trend of modern ideas and problems that it would be 
an attractive study even apart from the special interest 
which attaches to it from the point of view of religious 
and idealistic conceptions of the universe. 

Both Liebig and Johannes Miiller remained vitalists, 
notwithstanding the discovery of the synthesis of urea 
and the increasing number of organic compounds which 
were built up artificially by purely chemical methods. 
It was only about the middle of the last century that 
the younger generation, under the leadership, in 
Germany, of Du Bois-Reymond in particular, went over 



YIRCHOWS " CAUTION " 



237 



decidedly to the mechanistic side, and carried the 
doctrines of the school to ever fresh victories. But 
opposition was not lacking from the outset, though it 
was restrained and cautious. 

Viechow's " Caution " 

Here, as also in regard to "Darwinism," which was ad- 
vanced about the same time, the typical advocate of "'cau- 
tion n was Rudolf Virchow. His doubts and reservations 
found utterance very soon after the theory itself had 
been promulgated. In his " Cellular Pathologie," * and 
in an essay on ' ; The Old Vitalism and the New." f he 
puts in a word for a vis vital is. The old vitalism, he 
declared, had been false because it assumed, not a vis, 
but a spiriius vitalis. The substances in animate and 
in inanimate bodies have undoubtedly absolutely 
the same properties. Nevertheless, " we must at once 
rid ourselves of the scientific prudery of regarding the 
processes of life solely as the mechanical result of the 
molecular forces inherent in their constituent bodily 
parts." The essential feature of life is a derived and 
communicated force additional to the molecular forces. 
Whence it comes we are not told. He glided all round 
the problem with platitudinarian expressions, which 
were intended to show his own adherence as a matter of 
course to the new biological school, and which revealed 
at the same time his striking incapacity for defining a 

* "Arch, fur pathol. Anatomie and Physiologie," Bd. Till. 1865. 
f Tol. IX.. 1S56. 



238 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

problem with any precision. At a " certain period in 
the evolution of the earth " this force arose, as the 
ordinary mechanical movements 64 swung over" into the 
vital. But it is thus a special form of movement, 
which detaches itself from the great constants of 
general movement, and runs its course alongside of, 
and in constant relation to, these. (Did ever vitalist 
assert more?) After thus preparing the way for a 
return of the veering process at a particular stage of 
evolution, and giving the necessary assurances against 
the "diametrically opposed dualistic position," Virchow 
employs almost all the arguments against the mechanical 
theory which vitalists have ever brought forward. 
Even the catalytic properties of ferments are above the 
" ordinary " physical and chemical forces. The move- 
ment of crystallisation, too, cannot be compared with 
the vital movement. For vital force is not immanent 
in matter, but is always the product of previous life.* 
In the simplest processes of growth and nutrition the 
vis vitalis plays its vital role. This is true in a much 
greater degree of the processes of development and 
morphogenesis. In the phenomena of irritability 
life reveals its spontaneity through "responses, 1 ' 
and so on. "Peu d'anatomie pathologique eloigne 
du vitalisme, beaucoup d'anatomie pathologique y 
ramene." 

It is impossible to make much of this position. It 
leaves the theory with one of the opposing parties, the 
* The same is true even of crystals, " omne crystallum e crystallo." 



PREYER'S POSITION 239 



practice with the other, and the problem just where it 
was before. 

Preyeii's Position 

Along with Virchow, we must name another of the 
older generation, the physiologist William Preyer, who 
combated " vitalism," "dualism," and " mechanism " with 
equal vehemence, and issued a manifesto, already some- 
what solemn and official, against " vital force." And 
yet he must undoubtedly be regarded as a vitalist by 
mechanists and vitalists alike.* He is more definite 
than Virchow, for he does not content himself with 
general statements as to the " origin " of vital force, 
and of the "swinging over" of the merely mechanical 
energies into the domain of the vital, but holds 
decidedly to the proposition omne vivum e vivo. He 
therefore maintains that life has always existed in the 
cosmos, and entirely rejects spontaneous generation. 

The fallacy, he says, of the mechanistic claims was 

due to the increasing number of physical explanations 

of isolated vital phenomena, and of imitations of the 

chemical products of organic metabolism. A wrong 

conclusion was drawn from these. " Any one who 

hopes to deduce from the chemical and physical 

properties of the fertilised egg the necessity that an 

animal, tormented by hunger and love must, after a 

* Cf. " Ueber die Aufgabe der Naturwissenschaft," Jena, 1876. 
" Naturwissenschaftliche Tatsachen und Problenie." "Physiologie 
und Entwicklungslehre," 1886, in the collection of the " Allgemeiner 
Vereins fur Deutsche Literatur." Also in the same collection, 
" Aus Natur- und Menscheu-leben." 



240 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



certain time, arise therefrom, has a pathetic resemblance 
to the miserable manufacturers of homunculi." Life 
is one of the underivable and inexplicable fundamental 
functions of universal being. From all eternity life 
has only been produced from life. 

As Preyer accepts the Kant-Laplace theory of the 
origin of our earth from the sun, he reaches ideas 
which have points of contact with the " cosmo-organic " 
ideas of Fechner. Life was present even when the 
earth was a fiery fluid sphere, and was possibly more 
general and more abundant then than it is now. And 
life as we know it may only be a smaller and isolated 
expression of that more general life.* 

* These ideas are not fully worked out, and they are disguised in 
poetic form — for instance, when even the play of flames is com- 
pared to vital processes. But if they be stripped of their poetic garb, 
they lead to the same conclusions to which one is always led when 
one approaches the problem unprejudiced by naturalistic or 
anthropomorphic preconceptions of the relation of the infinite to the 
finite, or the divine to the natural. If we exclude the materialistic 
or semi-materialistic position which regards teleological phenomena, 
vital processes, and even states of sensation and consciousness as the 
function of a " substance " or of matter, we can quite well speak of 
them as general " cosmo-organic " functions of universal being, 
meaning that they occur of necessity wherever the proper conditions 
exist. According to the doctrine of potentiality and actuality, this is 
to say that all possible stages of the higher and highest phenomena 
are semper et ubique potentially present in universal being, and that 
they become actual wherever the physical processes are far enough 
advanced to afford the necessary conditions, 

Preyer's ideas have been revived of late, especially in the romantic 
form, as, for instance, in Willy Pastor's " Lebensgeschichte der Erde " 
("Leben und "Wissen," Vol. I., Leipzig, 1903). And in certain 
circles, characterised by a simultaneous veneration for and combina- 



PREYER'S POSITION 



241 



Among the younger generation of specialists, those 
most often quoted as opponents of the mechanical 
theory are probably Bunge, Rindfleisch, Kerner von 
Marilaun, Neumeister and Wolff. A special group 
among them, not very easy to classify, may be called 
the Tectonists. Associated with them is Reinke's 
44 Theory of Dominants." Driesch started from their 
ranks, and is a most interesting example of consistent 
development from a recognition of the impossibilities 
of the mechanistic position to an individually thought- 
out vitalistic theory. Hertwig, too, takes a very definite 
position of his own in regard to these matters. Perhaps 
the most original contribution in the whole field is 
Albrecht's " Theory of Different Modes of Regarding 
Things." We may close the list with the name of 
K. C. Schneider, who has carried these modern ideas on 
into metaphysical speculation. Several others might 
be mentioned along with and connecting these repre- 
sentative names.* 

tion of modern natural science — Haeckel, Eomanticisui, Novalis and 
other antitheses — Fechner appears to have come to life again. The 
type of this group is W. Bolsche. Naturally enough, Pastor has 
turned his attention also to the recent views of Schroen in regard to 
crystallisation. The fact, omne crystallum e crystallo, like the 
corresponding fact, omne vivum e vivo, was long a barrier against 
mechanistic derivation. But Schroen draws a parallel between 
crystallisation and organic processes, so that the alleged clearness 
and obviousness of the inorganic can no longer be carried over — in 
the old fashion — into the realm of life, but, conversely, the mystery 
of life must be extended downwards, and continued into the 
inorganic. 

# Worthy of note and much cited is a somewhat indefinite essay 

Q 



242 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



The Position of Bunge and other Physiologists 

For a long time one of the most prominent figures in 
the controversy was Prof. G. Bunge, of Basle, who was 
one of the first modern physiologists to champion 
vitalism, and who has tried to show by analogies and 
illustrations what is necessarily implied in vital activity.* 
The mechanical reduction of vital phenomena to physico- 
chemical forces, he says, is impossible, and becomes more 
and more so as our knowledge deepens. He brings for- 
ward a series of convincing examples of the way in which 
apparent mechanical explanations have broken down. 
The absorption of the chyle through the walls of the 
intestine seemed to be a mechanically intelligible process 

on " Neo vitalism," by the Wurzburg pathologist, E. von Eindfleisch 
(in " Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift," 1895, No. 38). 

* Already given in detail in his " Lehrbuch der phys. und pathol. 
Chemie" (Second Edition, 1889), in the first chapter, "Vitalism and 
Mechanism." In the meantime a fifth revised and enlarged edition 
of Bunge's book has appeared as a " Lehrbuch der Physiologie des 
Menschen" (Leipzig, 1901). The relevant early essays appear here 
again under the title "Idealism and Mechanism." The arguments 
are the same. It is often supposed that it is merely a question of 
time, and that in the long run we must succeed in finding proofs 
that the whole process of life is only a complex process of move- 
ment ; but the history of physiology shows that the contrary is the 
case. All the processes which can be explained mechanically are 
those which are not vital phenomena at all. It is in activity that 
the riddle of life lies. The solution of this riddle is looked for, 
more decidedly than before but still somewhat vaguely, in the 
" idealism " of self -consciousness and its implications. " Physiologus 
nemo nisi psychologus." These views have been also stated in a 
separate lecture : Gr. Bunge, " Vitalismus und Mechanismus," 
(Leipzig, 1886). 



BUNGE AND OTHER PHYSIOLOGISTS 243 

of osmosis and diffusion. But in reality it proves to be 
rather a process of selection on the part of the epithelial 
cells of the intestine, analogous to the selection and 
rejection exercised elsewhere by unicellular organisms. 
In the same way the epithelial cells of the mammary 
glands "select" the suitable substances from the blood. 
It is impossible to explain in a mechanical way the 
power which directs the innumerable different chemical 
and physical processes within the organism, whether 
they be the bewilderingly purposeful reactions in the 
individual life of the cell, which seem to point to 
psychic processes within the plasm, or the riddles of 
development and of inheritance in particular ; for how 
can a spermatozoon, so small that 500 millions can lie 
on a cubic line, be the bearer of all the peculiarities of 
the father to the son ? 

In Lecture III. Bunge defines his attitude towards 
the law of the conservation of energy. In so doing he 
unconsciously follows the lines laid down by Descartes. 
All processes of movement and all functions exhibited 
by the living substance are the results of the accumu- 
lated potential energies, and the sums of work done 
and energy utilised remain the same. But the libera- 
tion and the direction of these energies is a factor by 
itself, which neither increases nor diminishes the sum of 
energies. " Occasiones " and " causae " are brought into 
the field once more. The energies effect the pheno- 
mena, but they require " occasioiies " to liberate them ; 
thus a stone may fall to the ground by virtue of the 



244 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

potential energies stored in it at the time of its suspen- 
sion, but it cannot fall until the thread by which it 
hangs has been cut. The function of the 66 occasio n 
itself is something quite outside of and without relation 
to the effect caused; it is a matter of indifference 
whether the thread be cut gently through with a razor 
or shot in two with a cannon ball. 

Kassowitz * is an instructive example of how much 
the force of criticism has been recognised even by those 
occupying a convinced mechanical point of view. He 
subjects all the different theories which attempt to 
explain the chief vital phenomena in mechanical terms 
to a long and exhaustive examination. The theories of 
the organism as a thermodynamic engine, osmotic 
theories, theories of ferments, interpretations in terms 
of electro-dynamics and molecular-physics — are all 
examined (chap, iv.) ; and the failure of all these 
hypotheses, notwithstanding the enormous amount of 
ingenuity expended in their construction, is summed up 
in an emphatic "Ignoramus." " The failure is a strik- 
ing one, 11 and it is frankly admitted that, in strong 
contrast to the earlier mood of confident hope, there 
now prevails a mood of resignation in regard to the 
mechanical-experimental investigation of the living 
organism, and that even specialists of the first rank 
are finding that they have to reckon again seriously 
with vital force. This breakdown and these admissions 
do not exactly tend to prejudice us in favour of the 
* "Allgemeine Biologie" (2 vols.), Vienna, 1899. 



VIEWS OF PHYSIOLOGISTS ILLUSTRATED 245 

author's own attempt to substantiate new mechanical 
theories. 

In the comprehensive text-book of physiological 
chemistry by R. Neumeister, the mechanical standpoint 
seemed to be adhered to as the ideal. But the same 
writer forsakes it entirely, and disputes it energetically 
in his most recent work, " Betrachtungen iiber das 
Wesen der Lebenserscheinungen - * (" Considerations as 
to the Nature of Vital Phenomena He passes over 
all the larger problems, such as those of development, 
inheritance, regeneration, and confines himself in the 
main to the physiological functions of protoplasm, 
especially to those of the absorption of food and meta- 
bolism. And he shows, by means of illustrations, in 
part Bunge's, in part his own, and in close sympathy 
with Wundt's views, that even these vital phenomena 
cannot possibly be explained in terms of chemical 
affinity, physical osmosis, and the like. In processes 
of selection (such as, for instance, the excretion of 
urea and the retention of sugar in the blood), the "aim 
is obvious, but the causes cannot be recognised." 
Psychical processes play a certain part in the functions 
of protoplasm in the form of qualitative and quantita- 
tive sensitiveness. All the mechanical processes in 
living organisms are initiated and directed by psychical 
processes. Physical, chemical and mechanical laws are 
perfectly valid, but they are not absolutely dominant. 
Living matter is to be defined as " a unique chemical 
* Jena, 1903. 



246 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



system, the molecules of which, by their peculiar 
reciprocal action, give rise to psychical and material 
processes in such a way that the processes of the one 
kind are always causally conditioned and started by 
those of the other kind." The psychical phenomena 
he regards as transcendental, supernatural, " mystical," 
yet unquestionably also subject to a strict causal nexus, 
although the causality must remain for ever concealed. 
Starting from this basis, he analyses and rejects the 
explanations which have been offered in terms of the 
analogy of ferments, enzymes, or catalytic processes. 
In particular, he disputes OstwakTs " Energismus " and 
Verworn's Biogen hypothesis.* 

* Of. especially Verworn's example of the manufacture of sul- 
phuric acid. See what we have previously said on the " second 
line" of mechanistic theory, along which Neumeister's thought 
mainly moves. See especially p. 198. As regards the "fifth 
line," the problem of the development of form in its present phase, 
there is an instructive short essay by Fr. Merkel (ISTachrichten der 
K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Gottingen. Geschaftl. Mitt. 
1897, Heft 2) — " Welche Krafte wirken gestaltend auf den Korper 
der Menschen und Tiere ? " This essay avoids, obviously intention- 
ally, the shibboleths of controversy. The mechanical point of view 
and the play with mechanical analogies and models are abruptly 
dismissed. " If things, which were in themselves susceptible of 
mechanical explanations, occur in the absence of the mechanical 
antecedent conditions, then we must seek for other forces to enable 
us to understand them." And quite calmly a return is made to the 
old, simple conception of a " regulative " and a " formative force," 
inherent as a capacity sui generis within the " energids," the really 
living parts of the cell. The cell-energid carries within it the 
" pattern " of the organisation, and the partial or perfect "capacity" 
(" Fertigkeit") for producing and reproducing the whole organism. 
But these two forces " make use of " the physico-chemical forces as 



VIEWS OF PHYSIOLOGISTS ILLUSTRATED 247 

Among the vitalists of to-day, one of the most 
frequently cited, perhaps, except Driesch the most 
frequently cited, is G. Wolff, a Privatdozent, formerly 
at Wiirzburg, now at Basle. He has only published 
short lectures and essays, and these deal not so much 
with the mechanical theory as with Darwinism.* But 
in these writings his main argument is that of 
his concluding chapter : the spontaneous adaptiveness 
of the organism, which nullifies all contingent theories 
to explain the purposiveness in ontogeny and phylo- 
geny. And in his lecture, " Mechanismus und Vital- 
ismus, 1 ^ in which he directs his attention especially to 
criticising Butschli's defence of mechanism, the only 
problem to which prominence is given is the one with 
which we are here concerned. In spite of their brevity, 
these writings have given rise to much controversy, 
because what is peculiar to the two standpoints is 
described with precision, and the problem is clearly 
defined. His criticism had its starting-point in, and 
received a special impulse from an empirical proof, due 
to a very happy experiment of his own, of the marvel- 
lous regenerative capacity, and the inherent purposive 

tools to work out details. So to describe the state of the case is not 
of course a solution of the problem ; it is only a figurative formula- 
tion of it. But that, at the present day, we can and must return to 
doing this if we are to describe things simply and as they actually 
occur, is precisely what is most instructive in the matter. 

* " Beitrage zur Kritik der Darwinschen Lehre," which was first 
published in the " Biologisches Zentralblatt," 1898. 

f Leipzig, 1892. 



248 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

activity of the living organism. He succeeded in 
proving that if the lens of the eye of the newt be 
excised, it may be regrown. The importance of this 
fact is greatly increased if we trace out in detail the 
various impossible rival mechanical interpretations 
which have grown up around this interesting case. 
As Driesch says, " It is not a restoration starting from 
the wound, it is a substitution starting from a different 
place." 

The Views of Botanists Illustrated 

It might have been expected that in the domain of 
plant- biology, if anywhere, the mechanistic standpoint 
would have been the prevailing one. For it is almost a 
matter of course to regard plants as devoid of sensation 
or " psychical " life, and as mechanical systems, chemical 
laboratories, and reflex mechanisms, and this way of 
regarding them has been made easy by the very marked 
uniformity and lack of spontaneity in their vital pro- 
cesses as compared with those of animals. But it is not 
the case that mechanical theories have here prevailed. 
The opposition to them is just as great here as elsewhere, 
and from the days of Wigand onwards it has been 
almost continuously sustained.* Very characteristic is 

* Before Wigand's larger works there had appeared F. Delpino : 
" Applicazione della Teoria Darwinia ai Fiori ed agli Insetti Visitatori 
dei Fiori " (Bull, della Societa Entornologica Ital., Florence 
1870). He says : "Un principio intrinsico, reagente, finche dura la 
vita, contro le influence estrinseche ossia contro gli agenti chimici e 
fisici." 



VIEWS OF BOTANISTS ILLUSTRATED 249 



Pfeffer's " Pflanzen-Physiologie " (1897), which is written 
professedly from the mechanist point of view. "Vi- 
talism," according to this authority, is to be rejected, 
but instead of " vital force " he offers us " given pro- 
perties," and the alleged machine-like collocations of 
the most minute elements. In regard, for instance, to 
the riddle of development and morphogenesis, we must 
simply accept it as a "given property," that the acorn 
grows in an oak and nothing else. The chemical 
explanation of the vital functions of protoplasm is also 
to be rejected ; as a shattered watch is no longer a 
watch though it remains chemically the same, so it is 
with protoplasm. The available chemical knowledge 
of the substances of which protoplasm is made 
up is insufficient to render the vital processes intelli- 
gible. Here, as everywhere else, we have to reckon 
with ultimate " properties (entities), which we neither 
can, nor desire to analyse further." " The human mind 
is no more capable of forming a conception of the 
ultimate cause of things than of eternity." If all the 
views here indicated were followed out to their logical 
conclusions, they would hinder rather than further the 
process of reduction to terms of physico-chemical 
sequences. 

Kerner von Marilaun in his " Pflanzenleben " de- 
liberately takes up a thorough-going vitalist position, 
and on this point as well as on many others he opposed 
the current theory of the school (Darwinism). It is 
true, he admits, that many of the phenomena in plants 



250 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



can be explained in purely mechanical terms, but they 
are only those which may occur also in non-living 
structures. The specific expressions of life cannot be 
explained in this way. He shows this more fully in 
regard to the most fundamental of all the vital processes 
in the plant-body — the breaking up of carbonic acid gas 
by the chlorophyll to obtain the carbon which is the 
fundamental element in all living organisms. We know 
the requisite conditions : the supply of raw material, and 
the sunlight from which the energy is derived. But 
how the chlorophyll makes use of these to effect the 
breaking up, and how it starts the subsequent syntheses 
of the carbon into the most complex organic compounds 
remains a mystery. And so on upwards through all the 
strictly vital phenomena. 

Wiesners* view of things is essentially similar. He 
gives a very impressive picture of the mystery of the 
chemistry of the plant, showing how small is the number 
of food-stuffs and raw materials in comparison to the 
thousands of highly complex chemical substances which 
the plant produces, and how much work there is involved 
in de-oxydising the food and in forming syntheses. He, 
too, refuses, as usual, to postulate " vital force." Yet to 
speak of " the fundamental peculiarities of the living 
matter inherent in the organism " and to admit that 
plants are " irritable," " heliotropic," " geotropic," &c, 
amounts to much the same thing as postulating vital 

* " Elemente der Wissenschaftlichen Botanik. Biologie der 
Pflanzen." 1889. 



VIEWS OF BOTANISTS ILLUSTRATED 251 



force ; that is to say, to a mere naming of the specific 
problem of life without explaining it. The author him- 
self admits this when he says in another place : " If I 
compare organisms with inorganic systems, I find that 
the progress of our knowledge is continually enlarging 
the gulf which separates the one from the other ! " 

These anti- mechanical tendencies show themselves 
most emphatically in the work of Fr. Ludwig.* In his 
concluding chapter, after a discussion of the theories of 
Darwin, Nageli, and Weismann, he postulates, for vari- 
ation, heredity, and species-formation in particular, 
" forces other than physico-chemical," " let us call them 
frankly psychical." 

It is instructive to see how these u vitalistic " views 
crop up even in studies of detail and of the microscopi- 
cally small, as for instance in E. Crato's " Beitrage zur 
Anatomie und Physiologie des Elementai^-organismus." 
How the living organism contains within itself what 
is in its turn living, down into ever smaller detail, 
(amoeboid movements of certain plastines, physodes,) 
how incomparable the living organism is with a 
" machine," to which its libellers are so fond of likening 
it, how it builds itself up, steers, and stokes itself, how 
it produces with " playful ease " the most marvellous 
and graceful forms, makes combinations and breaks them 
up, how analogous its whole activity is to " being able " 
and " willing," all this is clearly brought out.-j- 

* " Lehrbuch cler Biologie der Pflanzen." Stuttgart, 1895. 

f Cf. Cohn, " Beitrage zur Biologie der Pflanzen," vii. 407. See 



252 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



A very fresh and lucid presentation of the whole case 
is given by Borodin, Professor of Botany in St. Peters- 
burg, in his essay,'" "Protoplasm and Vital Force."* 
He sharply castigates the one-sidedness and impetuosity 
of the mechanical theory, as in HaeckeFs discovery of 
Bathybius and of non-nucleated bacteria. The latter 

especially the concluding chapter, " Einiges iiber Functionen der 
einzelnen Zellorgane." From Zoology we may cite E. Teichmann's 
investigation, " Ueber die Beziehung zwischen Astrospharen und 
Furchen." " Experimentelle Untersuchungen am Seeigelei " ("Archiv. 
f. Entw. Mech." xvi. 2, 1903). This paper contains no references to 
"psychical phenomena," "power," or "Jwill," and we cannot but 
approve of this in technical research. But it is pointed out that the 
mechanistic interpretation of the detailed processes of development 
has definite limitations, and we are referred to " fundamental 
characters of living matter which we must take for granted." 

This is even more decidedly the case in Tad. Garbowski's beautiful 
" Morphogenetische Studien, als Beitrag zur Methodologie zoolog- 
ischer Forschung." These belong to the line of thought followed by 
Driesch and Wolff, who are both frequently and approvingly quoted, 
and they afford an excellent instance of that mood of dissatisfaction 
with and protest against the " dogmas " of descent, selection and 
phylogeny, which is observable in many quarters among the younger 
generation of investigators. Garbowski vigorously combats Haeckel's 
theories of development, especially " the fundamental biogenetic law, 
and the Gastrasa theory." He criticises " mechanistic " interpreta- 
tions of the development of the embryo, which "treat the living 
being morphologically, as if the matter were one of vesicles, cylinders 
and plates, and not of vital units": and he does not look with 
favour on " artificial amoebae," which can move, creep, and do 
everything except live. The ideal of biology is of course always a 
science with laws and equations, but the key to these will not be 
found in mechanics. Garbowski's studies may be highly recom- 
mended as giving a sharp and vivid impression of the modern anti- 
mechanistic tendencies observable even in technical research. 

* Trans, by Levinsohn. " Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung," 
Munich, 1898, No. 166. 



CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 253 



are problematical, and the former has been proved an 
illusion. To penetrate farther into the processes of life 
is simply to become aware of an ever-deepening series of 
riddles. There is no such thing as " protoplasm," or 
" living proteid," or indeed any unified, simple u living 
matter " whatever. Artificial " oil-emulsion amoeba? "* 
bear the same relation to living ones that Vaucanson's 
mechanical duck bears to a real one ; that is, none at 
all. Our 44 protoplasm " is as mystical as the old 
" vital force," and both are only camping-grounds for 
our ignorance. Neither the mechanical nor the atomic 
theory were the results of exact investigations ; they 
were borrowed from philosophy. We do indeed 
investigate the typically vital process of irritability by 
physical methods. But the response made by the 
organism to physical coercion may be called a mockery 
of physics. The mechanists help themselves out with 
crude analogies from the mechanical, conceal the 
problem with the name " irritability," and thus get rid 
of the greatest marvels. If vital force itself were to call 
out from its cells, " Here I am," they would probably see 
in it only a remarkable case of " irritability." Mechan- 
ism is no more positive knowledge than vitalism is ; it is 
only the dogmatic faith of the majority of present-day 
naturalists. 

Constructive Criticism 
Those whose protests we have hitherto been con- 
sidering have not added to their criticism of the 
* Biitschli, op. cit, p. 200. 



254 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

mechanical theory any positive contribution of their 
own, or at least they give nothing more than very 
slight hints pointing towards a psychical theory. But 
there are others who have sought to overcome the 
mechanical theory by gaining a deeper grasp of the 
nature of " force " in general. Their attempts have 
been of various kinds, but usually tend in one direc- 
tion, which can perhaps be most precisely and briefly 
indicated through Lloyd Morgan's views, as summed 
up, for instance, in his essay on " Vitalism."* In 
the beginning of biological text-books, we usually find 
(he says) a chapter on the nature of " force," but it is 
" like grace before meat" — without influence on quality 
or digestion. Yet this problem must be cleared up 
before we can arrive at any understanding of the 
whole subject. In all attempts at "reducing to 
simpler terms," it must be borne in mind that " force " 
reveals its nature in ever higher stages, of which every 
one is new. Even cohesion cannot be reduced to terms 
of gravitation, nor the chemical affinities and molecular 
forces to something more primitive. They are already 
something " outside the recognised order of nature." In 
a still higher form force is expressed in the processes of 
crystallisation. At the formation of the first crystal 
there came into action a directing force of the same 
kind as the will of the sculptor at the making of the 
Venus of Melos. This new element, which intervenes 
every time, Lloyd Morgan regards, with Herbert 
* "The Monist," 1899, p. 179. 



CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 255 



Spencer (" Principles of Biology "), as " due to that ulti- 
mate reality which underlies this manifestation, as it 
underlies all other manifestations." There can be no 
" understanding " in the sense of " getting behind 
things " : even the actions of " brute matter " cannot be 
" understood." The play of chance not only does not 
explain the living; it does not even explain the not-living. 
But life in particular can neither be brought into the cell 
from without, nor be explained as simply " emerging 
from the co-operation of the components of the proto- 
plasm," and it is " in its essence not to be conceived in 
physico-chemical terms," but represents " new modes of 
activity in the noumenal cause," which, just because it 
is noumenal, is beyond our grasp. For only phenomena 
are " accessible to thought." 

Among the biologists who concern themselves with 
deeper considerations, Oscar Hertwig,* the Director of 
the Anatomical Institute at Berlin, has expressed ideas 
similar to those we have been discussing, little as this 
may seem to be the case at first sight. He desires to oust 
the ordinary mechanism, so to speak, by replacing it by a 
mechanism of a higher order, and in making the attempt 
he examines and deepens the traditional ideas of 
causality and " force," and defines the right and wrong 
of the quantitative-mathematical interpretation of 
nature in general, and of mechanics in particular. He 

* Cf. "Entwicklung der Biologie in 19 Jahrhundert " ("Natur- 
forscher Yersammlung," 1900), and u Zeit-und Streit-fragen der 
Biologie," 1891-7, especially Part II., " Mechanik und Zoologie." 



256 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

follows confessedly in Lotze's path, not so much in 
regard to that thinker's insistence upon the association 
of the causal and the teleological modes of interpreta- 
tion, as in modifying the idea of causality. O. Hertwig 
puts forward his own theories with special reference to 
those of W. Roux, the founder of the new 44 Science of 
the Future " — the mechanical, and therefore only scien- 
tific theory of development, which no longer only de- 
scribes, but understands and causally explains pheno- 
mena (" Archiv fiir Entwicklungsmechanik There are 
two kinds of mechanism (Hertwig says) : that in the 
higher philosophical sense, and that in the purely physical 
sense. The former declares that all phenomena are 
connected by a guiding thread of causal connection and 
can be causally explained. As such, its application to 
the domain of vital phenomena is justifiable and 
self-evident. But it is not justifiable if cause be simply 
made identical with and limited to 44 force, ,, if the causal 
connection be only admitted in the technical sense of the 
transference and transformation of energy, and if, over 
and above, it is supposed to give an 44 explanation," in 
the sense of an insight into things themselves. Even 
mechanics is (as Kirchoff maintained) a 44 descriptive " ,1 
science. Hertwig agrees with Schopenhauer and Lotze 
in regarding every primitive natural 44 force " as unique, 
not reducible to simpler terms, but qualitatively distinct, 
— a "qualitas occulta,"" capable not of physical but 
only of metaphysical explanation. And thus his con- 
clusions imply rejection of mechanism in the cruder 



CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 257 

sense. As such, it has only a very limited sphere of 
action in the realm of the living. The history of 
mechanical interpretations is a history of their collapse. 
The attempt to derive the organic from the inorganic 
has often been made. But no such attempts have held 
the field for long. We can now say with some reason 
that 44 the gulf between the two kingdoms of nature 
has become deeper just in proportion as our physical 
and chemical, our morphological and physiological 
knowledge of the organism has deepened. v Mach's 
expression 44 mechanical mythology, 11 is quoted, and 
then a fine passage on the insufficiency of the mathe- 
matical view of things in general concludes thus : 
44 Mathematics is only a method of thought, an excel- 
lent tool of the human mind, but it is very far from 
being the case that all thought and knowledge moves 
in this one direction, and that the content of our 
minds can ever find exhaustive expression through it 
alone." 

In his 44 Theory of Dominants, 1 ' * Reinke, the botanist 
of Kiel, has attempted to formulate his opposition to 
the physico-chemical conception of life into a vitalistic 
theory of his own. Among biologists who confess them- 
selves supporters of the mechanical theory, there are 
some who expressly reject explanations in terms of 

t " Die Organisrnen und ihr Ursprung," published in " Nord und 
Siid," xviii., p. 201 seq.— "Die Welt als Tat," Berlin 1899, since 
then in second edition. — " Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie," 
1901. — And "Der Ursprung des Lebens auf der Erde," in the 
" Turmer-Jahrbuch," 1903. 

R 



258 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

chemical and physical principles, and emphasise, more 
energetically than others, that these can only give 
rise to vital phenomena and complex processes of 
movement, on the basis of a most delicately differen- 
tiated structure and architecture of the living sub- 
stance in its minute details, and from the egg 
onwards. They have created the strict " machine 
theory * and they may be grouped together as the 
" tectonists. 11 " A watch that has been stamped to 
pieces is no longer a watch. 11 Thus the merely mate- 
rial and chemical is not the essential part of the 
living; it is the tectonic, the machinery of structure 
that is essential. The fundamental idea in this posi- 
tion is precisely that of Lotze. It is not a " mystical, 11 
vital principle, that sets up, controls, and regulates the 
physical and chemical processes within the developed or 
developing organism. They receive their direction and 
impulse through the fact that they are associated with 
a given peculiar mechanical structure. This theory cer- 
tainly contains all the monstrosities of preformation in 
the germ, the mythologies of the infinitely small, and 
it suffers shipwreck in ways as diverse as the number 
of its sides and parts. But it has the merit of clearly 
disclosing the impossibilities of purely chemical ex- 
planations. Reinke's " Theory of Dominants 11 started 
from such tectonic conceptions, and so originally did 
Driesch's Neovitalism, of which we shall presently have 
to speak. 

Reinke^ theory has gone through several stages of 



CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 



259 



development. At first its general tenor was as follows : 
Every living thing is typically different from everything 
that is not living. What explains this difference ? 
Certainly not the hypothesis of vital force, which is far 
from being clear. The idea that forces of a psychic 
nature are inherent in the organism is also rejected. 
The illustration of a watch helps us to understand. 
The impelling force in it is certainly not merely the 
ordinary force of gravity or the general elasticity of 
steel. The efficacy of simple forces such as these can 
be increased in infinite diversity by the 44 construction 
of the apparatus " in which they operate. Life is the 
function of a quite unique, marvellously complex, 
inimitable combination of machines. If these be 
given, the most complex processes fulfil themselves 
of necessity and without the intervention of special 
vital forces. But how can they be 44 given " ? The 
sole analogy to be found is the making of real 
machines, artificial products as distinguished from 
fortuitous products. They cannot be made without 
the influence and activity of intelligence. To explain 
the incomparably more ingenious and complex vital 
machine as due to a fortuitous origin and collo- 
cation of its individual parts would be more absurd 
than it would be to think of a watch being made 
in this way. The dominance of a creative idea 
cannot but be recognised. An intelligent natural 
force which is conscious of its aims and calculates 
its means must be presupposed, if we are really to 



260 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



satisfy our sense of causality. It is a matter of personal 
conviction whether we find this force in 44 God " or in 
the " Absolute." 

These views are more fully developed in the theory 
of dominants expounded in Reinke's later work, 44 Die 
W elt as Tat " (after what has been said the meaning of 
the title will be self-evident), and in his " Theoretische 
Biologic"* Very vigorous and convincing are the 
author's objections to the naturalistic theories of 
organic life, especially to the " self-origin " of the 
living, or spontaneous generation. In all vital pro- 
cesses we must reckon with a 44 physiological #," which 
cannot be eliminated, which gives to life its unique and 
underivable character. There are 44 secondary forces," 
44 superforces," 44 dominants," which bring about what is 
peculiar in vital functions and direct their processes. 
4fc Vitalism " in the strict sense is thus here also rejected. 
The machine-theory is held valid. There are 44 domi- 
nants " even in our tools and utensils, in our hammer 
and spoon, and the 44 operation " of these cannot be 
explained merely physico-chemically, but through the 
dominants of the form, structure and composition, with 
which they have been invested by intelligence. The 
association with the views of the tectonists is so far 
quite apparent. But the idea of 44 dominants" soon 
broadens out. We find dominants of form-development, 

* Cf., the discussion by A. Drews in the " Preuss. Jahrbuch," 
October, 1902, p. 101, a review of Keinke's " Einleitung in die 
theoretische Biologic" 



CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF DRIESCH 261 



of evolution, and so on. What were at first only 
peculiarities of structure and architecture have grown 
almost unawares into dynamic principles of form which 
have nothing more to do with the mechanical theory, 
and which, because of their dualistic nature, result in 
conclusions and modes of explanation which can hardly 
be called very useful. The lines along which the idea 
has developed are intelligible enough. It started 
originally from that of the organism as a finished 
product, functioning actively, especially in its meta- 
bolism. Here the comparison with a steam engine 
with self-regulators and automatic whistles is admissible, 
and one may speak of dominants in the sense of 
mechanical dominants. But the idea thus started was 
pressed into general service. And thus arose dominants 
of development, of morphogenesis, even of phylogenetic 
evolution ( u phylogenetic evolution-potential New 
dominants are added, and the theory advances farther 
and farther from the " machine theory," becomes ever 
more enigmatical, and more vitalistic. 



The Constructive Work of Driesch 

What in Reinke's case came about almost unper- 
ceived, Driesch did with full consciousness and intention, 
following the necessity laid upon him by his own 
gradual personal development and by his consistent, 
tenacious prosecution of the problem. The acuteness 
of his thinking, the concentration of his endeavours 



262 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

through long years, his comprehensive knowledge and 
mastery of the material, the deep logicalness and 
consistent evolution of his " standpoints," and his 
philosophical and theoretical grasp of the subject 
make him probably the most instructive type, in- 
deed, we may almost say, the very incarnation of the 
whole disputed question. In 1891 he published his 
" Mathematisch - mechanische Betrachtung morpho- 
logischer Probleme der Biologic," the work in which 
he first touched the depths of the problem. It is 
directed chiefly against the merely " historical " 
methods in biology, used by the current schools in 
the form of Darwinism. Darwinism and the Theory 
of Descent have been so far nothing more than " gal- 
leries of ancestors,"" and the science ranged under 
their banner is only descriptive, not explanatory. 
Instead of setting up contingent theories we must 
form a " conception " of the internal necessity, in- 
herent in the substratum itself, in accordance with 
which the forms of life have found expression — a 
necessity corresponding to that which conditions the 
form-development of the crystal. 

Experimental investigations and discoveries, and 
further reflection, resulted, in 1892, in his " Entwick- 
lungsmechanische Studien," and led him to insist on 
the need for what the title of his next year's work calls 
" Biologie als selbstandige Grundwissenschaft." In 
this work two important points are emphasised. The 
first is, that biology must certainly strive after pre- 



CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF DRIESCH 263 



cision, but that this precision consists not in sub- 
ordination to, but in co-ordination with physics. 
Biology must rank side by side with physics as an 
" independent fundamental science," and that in the 
form of tectonic. And the second point is, that the 
teleological point of view must take its place beside 
the causal. Only by recognising both can biology 
become a complete science. 

In the "Analytische Theorie der organischen Ent- 
wicklung " (1894) Driesch picks up the thread where he 
dropped it in the book before, and spins it farther, 
" traversing " his previous theoretical and experimental 
results. In this work the author still strives to remain 
within the frame of the tectonic and machine- theory, but 
the edges are already showing signs of giving way. Life, 
he says, is a mechanism based upon a given structure 
(it is however a machine which is constantly modifying 
and developing itself). Ontogenesis * is a strictly 
causal nexus, but following " a natural law the workings 
of which are entirely enigmatical " (with Wigand). 
Causality fulfils itself through u liberations," that is to 
say, cause and effect are not quantitatively equivalent ; 
and all effect is, notwithstanding its causal conditioning, 
something absolutely new and not to be calculated 
from the cause, so that there can be no question 

* Of all the bad Greek zoology has produced, " Ontogenesis " is 
probably the worst. The Becoming of the Being ! The word is used 
in contrast to Phylogenesis, the becoming of the race or of the species, 
and it denotes the development of the individual. 



264 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



of mechanism in the strict sense. And the whole is 
directed by purpose.* The vital processes compel us 
to admit that it seems " as if intelligence determined 
quality and order." Driesch still tries to reconcile 
causes and purposes as different " modes of regarding 
things," but this device he afterwards abandons. We 
cannot penetrate to the nature of things either by 
the causal or by the teleological method. But they 
are — as Kant maintained — two modes of looking at 
things, both of which are postulates of our capacity 
for knowing. Each must stand by itself, and neither 
can have its sequence disturbed by the interpolation 
of pieces from the other. In the domain of the 
causal there can be no teleological explanation, and 
conversely ; one might as well seek for an optical 
explanation of the synthesis of water; but both are 
true in their own place. The Madonna della Sedia, 
looked at microscopically, is a mass of blots, looked 
at macroscopically it is a picture. And it " is " both 
of these. 

Driesch's conclusions continue to advance, led steadily 
onwards by his experimental studies. In the " Maschi- 
nentheorie des Lebens," f he attacks his own earlier 
theories with praiseworthy determination, and remorse- 
lessly pursues them to the monstrous conclusions to 
which they lead, and shows that they necessarily perish 

* Cf. p. 130. Excellent observations on "purpose." If two or 
more chains of causes meet, we call it " chance ; " if they do so con- 
stantly and in a typical manner, we call it '* purpose." 

f "Biolog. Centralbl.," 1896, p. 363. 



CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF DRIESCH 265 

because of these. He had previously declared, at first 
emphatically, later with hesitation (we have already 
seen why), that every single vital process is of a 
physico-chemical kind, on the basis of a given " struc- 
ture " of living beings. But now he considers the living 
organism as itself a result of vital processes — that is, of 
development. If this also is to be explained mechani- 
cally (as physico-chemical processes based on material 
structure), then the ovum must possess m parvo this 
infinitely fine structure, by virtue of which it fulfils its 
own physiological processes of maintenance, and also 
becomes the efficient cause of the subsequent develop- 
ment. It must bear the type of the individual and of 
the species, as a rudiment (or primordium) within its own 
structure. Every specific type must, however, according 
to the theory of descent, be derived through an end- 
less process of evolution, by gradual stages, from 
some primitive organism. Just as in the mechanical 
becoming of the individual organism, so the primi- 
tive protovum must also be extraordinarily intricate 
and complex in its organisation if it is to give rise to 
all the processes of evolution and development involved 
in the succeeding ontogenies, phylogenies, regenera- 
tions, and so forth. This is a necessary conclusion 
if the machine-theory be correct, and if we refuse to 
admit that vital phenomena are governed by specific 
laws. This consequence is monstrous, and the theory 
of the tectonists therefore false. But if it be false, 
what then ? 



266 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Driesch answers this question in the books published 
in subsequent years.* In these he attains his final 
standpoint, and makes it more and more secure. The 
" machine-theory,' 1 and all others like it, are now defi- 
nitely abandoned. They represent the uncritical dog- 
matism of a materialistic mode of thought, which binds 
all phenomena to substance, and refuses to admit any 
immaterial or dynamic phenomena. The alleged initial 
structure is nowhere to be found. The pursuit of 
things into the most minute details leads to no in- 
dication of it. The chromatin, in which the most 
important vital processes have their basis, is very 
far from having this machine-like structure; it is 
homogeneous. The formation of the skeleton, for 
instance, of a Pluteus larva is due to migratory spon- 
taneously moving cells (comparable to the leucocytes 
of our own body, whose migrations and activities 
remind one much more of a social organism than of 
a machine). The organism arises, not from mechani- 
cal, but from " harmoniously-equipotential systems " ; 
that is to say, from systems every element of which 
has equal functional efficiency ; so that each individual 
part bears within itself in an equal degree the poten- 
tiality of the whole — an impossibility from the mechani- 
cal point of view. 

* " Die Lokalisation ( = spatial determination) morphogenetischer 
Vorgange, ein Beweis vitalistischen Geschehens," 1899. (In " Archiv. 
f. Entw.-Mechanik," viii., 1, and separately published) and "Die 
organischen Kegulationen : Vorbereitungen zu einer Theorie des 
Lebens," Leipzig, 1901. Also "Die '8eele' als elementarer Natur- 



CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF DRIESCH 267 



Driesch had given an experimental basis for this 
theory at an earlier stage, in his experiments on the 
initial stages of the development of sea-urchins, star- 
fishes, zoophytes, and the like. A Planarian worm cut 
into pieces developed a new worm of smaller size from 
each part. A mutilated Pluteus larva developed a new 
food-canal, and restored the whole typical form. His 
experiment of 1892 went farther still, for he succeeded 
in separating the first four segmentation-cells of the 
sea-urchin's e£g ■ and from each cell obtained a 

CO 

developing embryo. These facts, he maintains, compel 
us to assume a mode of occurrence which is dynamically 
sui generis, a "'prospective tendency " which is a sub- 
concept in the Aristotelian " Dvnamis." And the 
essential difference between tin's kind of operation and 
a mechanical operation is, that the same typical effect 
is always reached, even if the whole normal causal nexus 
be disturbed. Even when forced into circuitous paths 
the embrvo advances towards the same goal. Thus 
64 vitalism,*" that is, the independence and autonomy of 
the vital processes, is proved. The effect required is 
attained through " action at a distance," a mode of 
happening which is specifically different from anything 
to be found in the inorganic world, and which has its 
directive, for instance, in the regeneration of lost parts, 

factor," (studies on the movements of organisms). Leipzig, 1903. He 
gives a general review of his own evolution in the " Siiddeutsche 
Monatshefte," January 1904, under the title "Die Selbstandigkeit 
der Biologie und ihre Probleme." 



268 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



not in anything corporeal or substantial, but in the end 
to be attained. 

In his work on " Organic Regulations," Driesch 
collects from the most diverse biological fields more 
and more astonishing proofs of the activity of the 
living as contrasted with physico-chemical phenomena, 
and of the marvellous power the organism has to " help 
itself" and to attain the typical form and reach the 
end aimed at, even under the greatest diversity in the 
chain of conditions. The material here brought for- 
ward is enormous, and the author's grasp of it very 
remarkable ; and not the least of the merits of the book 
is, that the bewildering wealth and diversity of these 
phenomena, which are usually presented to us as isolated 
and uncoordinated instances, is here definitely systema- 
tised according to their characterisitic peculiarities, 
and from the point of view of the increasing distinctness 
of the " autonomy " of the processes. The system 
begins with the active regulatory functions of living 
matter in the chemistry of metabolism (see particularly 
the phenomena of immunisation), and ascends through 
different stages up to the regulations of regeneration. 
There could be no more impressive way of showing how 
little life and its " regulations " can be compared to 
the " self-regulations " of machines, or to the restoring 
of typical states of equilibrium and of form in the 
physical and chemical domain, to which the mechanists 
are fond of referring. 

The facts thus empirically brought together are then 



CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF DRIESCH 269 



linked together in a theory, and considered epistenio- 
logically. We may leave out of account all that is 
included in the treatment of modern idealism, imma- 
nence-philosophy, and solipsism. All this does not arise 
directly out of the vitalistic ideas, though the latter are 
fitted into an idealistic framework. Extremely vivid is 
the excursus on respiration and assimilation. (All 
processes of building up and breaking down take 
place within the organism under conditions notoriously 
different from those obtaining in the laboratory. It is 
radically impossible to speak of a living '•'substance'" 
according to the formula C x H y O z , which assimilates 
and disassimilates itself [sibi].) Excellent, too, are 
Driesch's remarks on materialistic elucidations of 
inheritance and morphogenesis. It is quite impos- 
sible to succeed with epigenetic speculations on a 
material basis (cf. Haacke). Weismann is so far 
right, he admits, from his materialistic premisses 
when he starts with preformations. But his theory, 
and all others of the kind, can do nothing more 
than make an infinitely small photograph of the 
difficulty. They 4 i explain " the processes of form- 
development and the regeneration of animals and plants, 
by constructing infinitely small animals and plants, 
which develop their form and regenerate lost parts. 
And Driesch holds it to be impossible to distribute 
a complicated tectonic among the elements of an equi- 
potential system. In denying the materialistic theory 
of development, Driesch again determinedly 61 traverses " 



270 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



his own earlier views. He does this, too, when he 
now rejects the reconciliation between causality and 
teleology as different modes of looking at things. The 
teleological now seems to him itself a factor playing 
a part in the chain of causes, and thus making it 
teleological. The key-word of all is to him the 
" entelechy " of Aristotle. 

In his last work on " The Soul," Driesch follows the 
impossibilities of the mechanical theories from the 
domain of vital processes into that of behaviour and 
voluntary actions. 

The Views of Albrecht and Schneider. 

An outlook and interpretation which Driesch* main- 
tained for a while, but afterwards abandoned, has 
been developed in an original and peculiar fashion by 
Eugen Albrecht, Prosector and Pathologist in Munich. f 
It is the theory of different ways of looking at things. 
Albrecht indeed firmly adheres to the chemical and 
physical interpretation of vital processes, regards 

* In the "Biol. Zentralbl.," June 1903, p. 427, Driesch is criticised 
by Moszkowski, who rejects Driesch's teleological standpoint. But 
even this criticism shows us how far the untenability of the 
mechanistic position has been recognised. It is based upon a some- 
what vague dynamism, which admits that the physico-chemical and 
all other mechanical interpretations have been destructively criticised 
by Driesch, and recognises entelechy ("£p eaury rb t£\os ^x 01 '") 
An entelechy without rAos ! 

■j- "Vorfragen der Biologie," 1899. "Die ' Ueberwindung des 
Mechanismus ' in der Biologie." " Biolog. Zentralbl.," 1901, p. 130. 



ALBRECHT AND SCHNEIDER 271 



approximate completeness along these lines as the ideal 
of science, and maintains their essential sufficiency. But 
he holds that the mechanists have been mistaken and 
one-sided in that they have upheld this interpretation 
and mode of considering things as the sole and the 
"true" one. According to our subjective attitude to 
things and their changes, they appear to us in quite 
different series of associations, each of which forms a 
complete series in itself, running parallel to the others, 
but not intruding to fill up gaps in them. Microscopic 
and macroscopic study of things illustrate such separate 
and complete series. The classical example for the 
whole theory is the psycho-physical parallelism. Psy- 
chical phenomena are not "explained" when the corre- 
lated line of material changes and the phenomena of the 
nervous system have been traced out. Similarly with 
the series of " vital " phenomena, " vital " interpretation 
from the point of view of the "living organism, ,, 
runs parallel to, but distinct from the chemical and 
physical analyses of vital processes. But each of 
these parallel ways of regarding things is " true." For 
the current separation of the " appearance " and 
" nature " of things is false, since it assumes that only 
one of the possible ways of regarding things, e.g., the 
mechanical-causal mode of interpretation is essential, 
and that all the others deal only with associated 
appearance. 

The idea that only one or two of these series can 
represent the "true nature " of the phenomenon " can 



TiZ NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



only be called cheap dogma." Each series is complete in 
itself, and every successive phase follows directly and 
without a break from the antecedent one, which alone 
explains it. In this lies the relative justification of the 
ever-recurring reactions to " vitalism." 

This theory of Albrecht's has all the charms and 
difficulties, or impossibilities, of parallelistic interpre- 
tations in general. Its validity might be discussed 
with reference to the particular case of psycho-physical 
parallelism.* 

To make a sound basis for itself it would require 
first to clear up the causality problem, and to answer, 
or at least definitely formulate the great question 
whether causing (Bewirkung) is to be replaced by mere 
necessary sequence — for this is where it ends. The 
conclusion which, with regard to biological methods 
and ideals, seems to make all concessions to the purely 
mechanical mode of interpretation, is not sufficiently 
obvious from the premisses. If the vital series be a 
" real" one, we should expect that a " vitalistic" mode 
of interpretation, with methods and aims of its own, 
would be required, just as a special science of psychology 
is required. The assumption that each series is com- 
plete without a break, and that an all-including analysis 
of vital processes in terms of mechanical processes must 

* Of. Tad. Garbowski, " Morphogenetische Studien," p. 167. The 
illustration here employed of the arc and the ''explanation of form 
by form" would be a good criticism of many of Albrecht's state- 
ments. 



ALBRECHT AND SCHNEIDER 273 



ultimately be possible, is a petitio principii, and breaks 
down before the objections raised by the vitalists. 
The most central problem in the whole matter, namely, 
the relation of the causal to the teleological, has not 
been touched. These two concepts would, of course, 
not yield " parallels," but would be different points of 
view, which could eventually be applied to each series. 

K. Camillo Schneider,* Privatdozent in Vienna, uses 
the soul, the psychical in the true sense, as the explana- 

* Schneider has expounded his physiological and morphological view- 
in his " Comparative Histology." In " Vitalismus " (" Elementare 
Lebensfunctionen," Vienna, 1903) he sums up his vitalistic views. It 
is a comprehensive work which goes deeper than others of its class 
into the detailed description and analysis of the intimate phenomena 
of life. Indeed it almost amounts to an independent biology. 
But the most essential vital problems, the development of form, re- 
generation, and inheritance, to which Driesch gives the fullest con- 
sideration, are all too briefly treated. In Chapters XI. and XII. the 
question of vitalism expands into a far-reaching discussion of the 
general outlook upon nature. We need not here concern ourselves 
with his more general views. Schneider must be regarded as a repre- 
sentative of the most modern tendency of " Psychism," which, 
stimulated by Mach, Avenarius, and the school of " immanence- 
philosophy," finds expression among the younger physiologists and 
biologists, from Schneider to Driesch, Verworn, Albrecht, and others 
To overthrow "materialism" and "realism," they utilise, with im- 
petuous delight, the ancient self-evident idea that what is given to 
us is sensation. They confuse and identify such opposites as Kant 
and Berkeley, and their own position with that of " solipsism." This 
outlook is still vague and vacillating, and it may perhaps compel 
epistemology to return on its old path from the sophists to Plato, 
from Hume to Kant. In Schneider's case, however, the thin stream 
of this new sensualism is intermingled with so many intuitions and 
perceptions of the deeper nature of knowledge that one is now curious 
to know how this strange mixture of semi-materialism, idealism, 
solipsism, and a priorism is to make the transition from its present 

s 



274 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



tion of the vital. What had been thought secretly 
and individually by some of the vitalists already 
mentioned, but had, so to speak, cropped up only as the 
incidentally revealed reverse side of their negations of 
mechanism, Schneider attempts definitely to formulate 
into a theory. The chief merit of his book on 
" Vitalism " is to be found, in Chapters II. to X., in 
his thorough discussion of the chemical, physical, and 
mechanical theories along the special lines of each. 

The list of critics might be added to, and the 
number of standpoints in opposition to mechanism 
greatly increased. This diversity of standpoint, and 
the individual way in which each independent thinker 
reacts from the mechanical theory shows that here, 
as also in regard to Darwin's theory of selection, 
we have to do with a dogmatic theory and a forced 
simplification of phenomena, not with an objective and 
calm consideration of things as they are. It is a theory 
where simplex has become sigillum falsi. 

HOW ALL THIS AFFECTS THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 

These denials and destructive criticisms of the me- 
chanical theory, which are now continually cropping up, 

extremely labile phase to a condition of stable equilibrium. One 
fears lest sooner or later a reaction against the contortions of this 
empiricism and psychism should lead to a modern rehabilitation of 
mysticism or occultism. (Of. p. 295 ff.) 

In an essay on "Vitalism" in the "Preuss. Jahrbuch," Aug. 1903, 
p. 276, Schneider has supplemented his previous work. 



THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 275 



lead, as must be obvious, towards a deeper conception 
and interpretation of reality in general, and towards a 
religious conception in particular. Unquestionably 
the most important fact in connection with them is the 
fresh revelation of the depth of things and of appear- 
ance, the increased recognition that our knowledge is 
only leading us towards mystery. 

It is indeed questionable whether anything more 
than this can be said in regard to the problem of life, 
whether we ought not to content ourselves with recog- 
nising the limits of our knowledge, and reject all 
positive statements that go beyond these limits. For 
the mechanists are undoubtedly right in this, that 
" entelechy," u the idea of the whole," " co-operation," 
" guidance," " psychical factors," and the like, are only 
names for riddles, and do not in themselves constitute 
knowledge.* The case here is somewhat similar to 
what we have already seen in connection with " anti- 
nomies." They, too, give us no positive insight into 
the true nature of things, but they at any rate prove 
to us that we have not yet understood what that is. 
And, just as they show us that our knowledge of the 
world as it appears to us can never be complete, so 
here it appears that we come upon inexplicabilities 
even within the domain accessible to our knowledge. 

* If the protest of natural science against these means no more 
than that they should be excluded as inaccessible to scientific under- 
standing, from the domain of its investigation, but not from reality, 
it is perhaps fully justified in its methods. 



276 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

Thus the religious conception of the world gains some- 
thing here as from the antinomies, namely, a fresh 
proof that the world which appears to us and can be 
comprehended by us, proclaims its true nature and 
depths, but does not reveal them. Perhaps there is 
still another gain. For in any case the vital processes 
and the marvels of evolution and development are 
examples of the way in which physical processes are 
constantly subject to a peculiar guidance, which cer- 
tainly cannot be explained from themselves or in 
terms of mechanism, organisation, and the like. All 
attempts to demonstrate this in detail, all " explana- 
tions " in terms of dynamic co-operation, of dominants, 
of ideas, or anything else, are vague, and seem to go to 
pieces when we try to take firm hold of them. But 
the fact remains none the less. 

May not this be a paradigm of the processes and 
development of the world at large, and even of 
evolution in the domain of history ? Here, too, all 
ideas of guidance, of endeavour after an aim, &c, which 
philosophical study of history or religious intuition 
seems to find, make shipwreck against the fact that every 
attempt to demonstrate their nature, fails. All these 
theories of influx, concursus, and so on, whether 
transcendental or immanent factors be employed, im- 
mediately become wooden, and never admit of veri- 
fication in detail. But precisely the same is true 
of the dominance of the "idea,'" or of the "law 



THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 277 



of evolution," or of the "potential of development " 
in every developing organism. Yet incomprehen- 
sible and undemonstrable in detail as this "domi- 
nance" is, and completely as it may be concealed 
behind the play of physical causes, it is there, none 
the less. 



CHAPTER X 



AUTONOMY OF SPIRIT 

The aim of our study has been to define our attitude 
to naturalism, and to maintain in the teeth of naturalism 
the validity and freedom of the religious conception of 
the world. This seemed to be cramped and menaced 
by those " reductions to simpler terms " which we have 
already discussed. 

But one of these reductions, the most important of 
all, we have not yet encountered, and it remains to be 
dealt with now. In comparison with this one all others 
are relatively unimportant, and it is easy to understand 
how some have regarded the problem of the relations 
of the naturalistic and the religious outlook as begin- 
ning at this point, and have neglected everything 
below it. For we have now to consider the attempt of 
naturalism to "reduce" spirit itself to terms of" nature, 
either to derive it from nature, or, when that is recog- 
nised as quite too confused and impossible, to make it 
subject to nature and her system of laws, or to similar 
laws, and thus to rob it of its freedom and independence, 
of its essential character as above nature and free from 
it, and to bring it down to the level of an accompany- 



AUTONOMY OF SPIRIT 



279 



ing shadow or a mere reverse side of nature. The 
aggressive naturalism which we have discussed has from 
very early times exercised itself on this point, and has 
instinctively and rightly felt that herein lies the kernel 
of the whole problem under dispute. It has for the 
most part concentrated its interest and its attacks upon 
the " immortality of the soul." But while this was often 
the starting-point, the nature of soul, and spirit, and 
consciousness in general have been brought under discus- 
sion and subjected to attacks which sought to show how 
vague and questionable was the reality of spirit as con- 
trasted with the palpable, solid and indubitable reality 
of the outer world. Prominence was given to the fact 
that the spiritual side of our nature is dependent on 
and conditioned by the body and bodily states, the 
external environment, experiences and impressions. 
These were often the sole, and always the chief sub- 
jects of the doctrine of the vulgar naturalism. But the 
same is true of the naturalism of the higher order, 
as we described it in Chapter II. In order to 
acquire definite guiding principles of investigation, it 
makes the attempt to find the true reality of pheno- 
mena in the mechanical, corporeal, physiological 
processes, and to take little or no account of the 
co-operation, the interpolation, the general efficiency 
of sensation, perception, thought, or will, and to treat 
them as though they were a shadow and accompani- 
ment of reality, but not as an equivalent, much less 
a preponderating constituent of it. Out of these 



280 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

fundamental principles of investigation, and out of 
the opposition and doubt with which the spiritual is 
regarded, there is compounded the current mongrel 
naturalism, which, without precision in its ideas, and 
without any great clearness or logical consequence in 
its views, is thoroughly imbued with the notion that 
that only is truly real which we can see, hear, and 
touch — the solid objective world of matter and energy, 
and that " science " begins and ends with this. As 
for anything outside of or beyond this, it is at most 
a beautiful dream of fancy, with which it is quite 
safe to occupy oneself as long as one clearly under- 
stands that of course it is not true. " Nature 11 is the 
only indubitable reality, and mind is but a kind of 
lusus or luxus naturce, which accompanies it at some 
few places, like a peculiarly coloured aura or shadow, 
but which must, as far as reality is concerned, yield 
pre-eminence to " Nature " in every respect. 

The religious conception is deeply and essentially 
antagonistic to all such attempts to range spirit, 
spiritual being, and the subjective world under 
" nature, 11 " matter, 11 " energy, 11 or whatever we may 
call what is opposed to mind and ranked above it in 
reality and value. The religious conception is made 
up essentially of a belief in spirit, its worth and pre- 
eminence. It does not even seek to compare the 
reality and origin of spirit with anything else what- 
ever. For all its beliefs, the most sublime and the 
crudest alike, conceal within them the conviction that 



AUTONOMY OF SPIRIT 



281 



fundamentally spirit alone has truth and reality, and 
that everything else is derived from it. It is a some- 
what pitiful mode of procedure to direct all apologetic 
endeavours towards the one relatively small question 
of " immortality thus following exactly the lines 
usually adopted by the aggressive exponents of 
naturalism, and thus allowing opponents to dictate 
the form of the questions and answers. It is quite 
certain that all religion which is in any way complete, 
includes within itself a belief in the everlastingness of 
our spiritual, personal nature, and its independence 
of the becoming or passing away of external things. 
But, on the one hand, this particular question can only 
be settled in connection with the whole problem, and, 
on the other hand, it is only a fraction of the much 
farther-reaching belief in the reality of spirit and its 
superiority to nature. The very being of religion 
depends upon this. That it may be able to take itself 
seriously and regard itself as true ; that all deep and 
pious feelings, of humility and devotion, may be 
cherished as genuine and as founded in truth ; that 
it behoves it to find and experience the noble and 
divine in the world's course, in history and in indi- 
vidual life ; that the whole world of feeling with all its 
deep stirrings and mysteries is of all things the most 
real and true, and the most significant fact of existence 
— all these are features apart from which it is impossible 
to think of religion at all. But they all depend upon 
the reality, independence and absolute pre-eminence of 



282 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



spirit. Freedom and responsibility, duty, moral con- 
trol and self-development, the valuation of life and 
our life-work according to our lifers mission and ideal 
aims, even according to everlasting aims, and "sub 
specie aeterni," the idea of the good, the true and 
the beautiful — all things apart from which religion 
cannot be thought of — all these depend upon spirit 
and its truth. And finally " God is Spirit " : religion 
cannot represent, or conceive, or possess its own 
highest good and supreme idea, except by thinking in 
terms of the highest analogies of what it knows in itself 
as spiritual being and reality. If spirit is not real and 
above all other realities ; if it is derivable, subordinate 
and dependent, it is impossible to think of anything what- 
ever to which the name of " God " can be given. And this 
is as true of the refined speculations of the pantheistic 
poetic religions, as of the idea of God in simple piety. 
The interest of religion as against the claims of 
naturalism includes all this. And it would be doing 
the cause of religion sorry service to extract from this 
whole some isolated question to which the mood of the 
time or traditional custom has given prominence. Our 
task must be to show that religion maintains its validity 
and freedom because of the truth and independence of 
spirit and its superiority to nature. 

It is, of course, impossible to give an exhaustive 
treatment of this problem in a short study like this. 
The answer to this question would include the whole 
range of mental science with all its parts and branches. 



AUTONOMY OF THE SPIRITUAL 283 

Mental science, from logic and epistemology up to and 
including the moral and aesthetic sciences, proves by its 
very existence, and by the fact that it cannot be reduced 
to terms of natural science, that spirit can neither be 
derived from nor analysed into anything else. And it 
is only when we have mastered all this that we can say 
how far and how strongly knowledge and known realities 
corroborate religion and its great conclusions as to spirit 
and spiritual existence, how they reinforce it and admit 
its validity and freedom. Since this is so, all isolated and 
particular endeavours in this direction can only be a 
prelude or introduction, and a more or less arbitrary 
selection from the relevant material of facts and ideas. 
And nothing more than this is aimed at in the following 
pages. 

Naturalistic Attacks on the Autonomy of the 
Spiritual 

The attacks that have been made by naturalism upon 
the independence and freedom of the spiritual are so 
familiar to every one — even from school days — through 
books of the type of Biichner's " Kraft und Stoff," 
and HaeckeFs " The Riddle of the Universe," and 
other half or wholly materialistic popular dogmatics, 
that it is unnecessary to enter into any detail. Very 
little that is new has been added in this connection to 
the attack made by Plato on himself in the " Phaedo " 
through Simmias and Kebes. It is only apparently 
that the modern attacks have become more serious 



284 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

through the deepened knowledge of natural science. At 
all times they have been as serious and as significant as 
possible, and the religious and every other idealistic 
conception of the universe has always suffered from them. 
It is plain that here, if anywhere, " faith goes against 
appearances," and that in the last resource we have to 
postulate free moral resolution, the will to believe, 
the desire for the ideal, for freedom, and for the eter- 
nity of the spirit, and the confidence of the spirit in 
itself. All this is, or at least ought to be, self-evident 
and generally admitted. 

Let us once more take a brief survey of the reasons 
on the other side and arrange them in order. 

That nature is everything and spirit very little seems 
to follow from a very simple circumstance. There are 
whole worlds of purely natural and corporeal existence 
without mind, sensation, or consciousness, which, quite 
untroubled by their absence, simply exist according 
to the everlasting laws of matter and energy. But 
nowhere do we find spirit or mind without a material 
basis. All that is psychical occurs in connection with 
a physical being, and with relatively few physical 
beings. Spirit seems wholly bound up with and de- 
pendent upon the states, development, and conditions 
of material being. With the body of living beings 
there arises what we call 64 soul " ; with the body it 
grows, gains content, changes, matures, ages, and dis- 
appears. According as the body is constituted and 
composed, as it is influenced by heredity, race, and 



AUTONOMY OF THE SPIRITUAL 2«5 



selection, by nutrition, mode of life, climate, and 
other circumstances, there are developed in a hundred 
different ways what we call the natural disposition or 
character, inclinations, virtues or vices, passions or 
temperaments. Even the names given to the different 
temperaments emphasise this dependence of what is 
innermost in us. the deepest tendencies of our being, on 
the bodily organisation and the nature of its physio- 
logical constitution. The man whose blood flows easily 
and freely is called sanguine, and the melancholic is the 
victim of his liver. According as our organs are good 
or bad, function freely or sluggishly, our mood rises or 
sinks, we are bold or cowardly, languid or impetuous, 
and enthusiasm is often enough only a peculiar name 
for a state which, physiologically expressed, might be 
called alcoholic poisoning. There is one soul in the 
sound bodv, another in the sickly. Fever, and the im- 
potence of the soul against it, made Holbach a mate- 
rialist. If the brain be diseased, that marvellous order of 
psychical processes which we call reasoning is broken ; 
the " soul ; " is wholly or partly eliminated ; it fades 
away, or becomes nothing more than a confused discon- 
nected medley of images and desires. Even artificial 
interference with, and changes in the bodily organisation 
react upon the mind. The removal of the thyroid gland 
may result in idiocy. Castration not only prevents the 
; breaking ' of the voice in the Sistine choristers, it 
damps the fires of life to dulness, and makes of the 
impetuous Abelard a comfortable discursive father- 



286 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

confessor. The mind is bound up almost piece by piece 
with its material basis. Through the " localisation " 
of psychic processes in the particular parts of the 
brain, naturalism has enormously strengthened the 
impression that existed even among the ancients, that 
sensation and imagination are nothing more than, let 
us say, what the note is to a tightly stretched string. 
Cerebrum and cerebellum are regarded as the seats of 
different psychic processes. The secret of the higher 
processes is believed to be hidden in the grey matter 
of the cortex of the cerebrum. We seek and find in 
the various lobes and convolutions of the brain the 
" centres " for the different capacities, the power of 
sight, of smell, of moving the arms, of moving the 
legs, of associating ideas, of co-ordinated speech, 
and so on. When brain and spinal cord are injured 
or removed piece by piece from a pigeon or a frog, it 
seems as if the " soul " were eliminated piece by piece, 
— the capacity for spontaneous free co-ordination, for 
voluntary action, for the various sense-impressions, and 
so on from the higher to the lower. It has even 
been maintained that the different feelings and percep- 
tions which are gradually acquired can be apportioned 
among the individual cells of the brain in which they 
are localised, and the thought-processes, the associations 
of percepts, the origin of consecutive ideas, the rapid 
and easy recalling of memory-images, and the process of 
voluntary control, of instincts, can be explained as due 
to the " gradual laying down of nerve-paths " between 



AUTONOMY OF THE SPIRITUAL 287 



the different centres and areas of localisation in the 
brain. All this seems to refute utterly the old belief 
in the unity and personality of the soul. It is different 
in youth and in age. and indeed varies continually. It 
is the ever- varied harmony of the notes of all the strings 
which are represented by the fibres and ganglion-cells 
of the nerve-substance. It apparently can not only 
be completely confused and brought to disharmony, but 
it may be halved and divided. An almost terrifying 
impression was produced when Tremblev in 1740 made 
the experiment of cutting a " hydra " in two, and 
showed that each of the halves became a complete 
animal, so that obviouslv each of the two halves of the 
soul grew into a new hydra-soul. And Trembley's 
hydra was only the precursor of all the cut-up worms, 
of the frogs, birds, and guinea-pigs that have been 
beheaded, or have had their brain removed, or their 
nerves cut. and have furnished further examples of this 
divisibility of " souls. " 

If the independence of the spiritual is thus shown to 
be a vain assumption, the alleged difference between 
the animal and the human Psyche is much more so. Not 
from the davs of Darwinism alone, but from the very 
beginning, naturalism has opposed this claim to 
distinctiveness. But it is due to Darwinism that the 
fundamental similar ity of the psychical in man and 
animals has come to be regarded as almost self-evident. 
The mental organisation of man. as well as his corporeal 
organisation, is traced back through gradual stages to 



288 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



animal antecedents, and in thus tracing it there are two 
favourite methods of procedure, which are, however, apt 
to be mutually destructive. 

On the one hand, some naturalists regard the 
animal anthropomorphically, insist on its likeness to 
man, discovering and extolling, not without emotion, 
all the higher and nobler possessions of the human 
mind, intellectual capacities, reason, reflection, synthesis, 
fancy, the power of forming ideas and judgments, of 
drawing conclusions and learning from experience, 
besides will in the true sense, ethical, social and 
political capacities, aesthetic perceptions, and even fits 
of religion in elephants, apes, dogs, down even to ants 
and bees, and these naturalists reject old-fashioned 
explanations in terms of instinct, and find the highest 
already contained in the lowest. Those of another 
school are inclined to regard man theriomorphically, to 
insist on his likeness to animals, explaining reason in 
terms of perception and sensation, deriving will from 
impulse and desire, and ethical and aesthetic valua- 
tions from physiological antecedents and purely animal 
psychological processes, thus, in short, seeking to find 
the lowest in the highest. (We have already met with 
an analogous instance of a similarly fallacious double- 
play on parallel lines.) So it comes about that both the 
origin and the development of the psychical and spiritual 
seem to be satisfactorily cleared up and explained, 
and at the same time a new proof is adduced for its 
dependence upon the physical. For what is true of all 



AUTONOMY OF THE SPIRITUAL 289 

other parts of the organisation, of the building up and 
perfecting of every member and every system of organs, 
the bony skeleton, the circulatory system, the alimentary 
canal, that they can be referred back to very simple 
beginnings, and that their evolution may be traced 
through all its stages — is equally true of the nervous 
system in general and of the brain in particular. It 
increases more and more in volume and in intricacy of 
structure, it expands the cranial cavity and diversifies its 
convolutions. And the more it grows, and the more 
complex it becomes, the more do the mental capacities 
increase in perfection, so that here again it seems once 
more apparent that the psychical is an accompaniment 
and result of the physical. 

Popular naturalism usually stops short here, and 
contents itself with half-truths and inconsequences, for it 
naively admits that psychical processes, sensation, per- 
ception, will, have a real influence upon the physical, and, 
not perceiving how much the admission involves, it 
does not trouble itself over the fact that, for instance 
in the so-called voluntary movements of the body, in 
ordinary behaviour, the psychical, and the will, in 
particular, is capable of real effect, and can move hand 
and foot and the whole body, and thus has a real 
reciprocal relation with the physical. This form of 
popular naturalism sometimes amuses itself with assum- 
ing a psychical inwardness even in non-living matter, 
and admitting the co-operation of psychical motives 
even in regard to it. 

T 



£90 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



But it is far otherwise with naturalism in the strict 
sense, which takes its fundamental principles and its 
method of investigation seriously. It is aware that 
such half-and-half measures interrupt the continuity of 
the system at the most decisive point. And therefore 
with the greatest determination it repeats along psycho- 
logical lines the same kind of treatment that it has 
previously sought to apply to biological phenomena : 
the corporeal must form a sequence of phenomena 
complete in itself and not broken into from without. 
All processes of movement, all that looks as if it 
happened " through our will," through a resolve due to 
the intervention of a psychical motive, every flush of 
shame that reddens the cheek, every stroke executed 
by the hand, every sound-wave caused by tongue and 
lips, must be the result of conditions of stimulation 
and tension in the energy of the body itself. 

This is the meaning of all those psycho-physical ex- 
periments that have been carried on with so much in- 
genuity and persistence (usually associated with attempts 
to explain vital phenomena in terms of mechanism). 
First, they attempt to interpret the expressions of will, 
feeling and need, the spontaneous activities and move- 
ments of the lowest forms of life — protists — as " pure 
reflexes, " as processes which take place in obedience to 
stimuli, and thus are ultimately due to chemical and 
physical influences and causes without the intervention 
of a psychical motive ; and, secondly, when this has been 
apparently or really achieved, the theory of irritability 



AUTONOMY OF THE SPIRITUAL 291 

and reflex mechanism is pushed from below upwards, 
until even the most intricate and complex movements 
and operations of our own body, which we have 
wrongly distinguished as acts or behaviour from mere 
processes of stimulation, are finally recognised as reflexes 
and liberations due to stimuli. Some stimulus or 
other, from light or sound or something else, is, accord- 
ing to this theory, conducted to the nervous centre, 
the ganglion, the spinal cord, the cerebellum or the 
cerebrum. Here it produces an effect, not of a psychi- 
cal nature, but some minute chemical, or physical, — or 
purely mechanical change, which goes through many 
permutations within the nervous centre itself, unites 
there with the stored energies, and then, thus altered, 
returns by the efferent nerve paths to effect a muscle- 
contraction in some organ, a stretching of the hand, or 
a movement of the whole body. The physical process 
is accompanied by a peculiar inward mirroring, which 
is the psychical penumbra or shadow of the whole 
business. Thus what is in reality a purely mechanical 
and reflex sequence appears like a psychical experience, 
like choice and w r ill and psychical causality. We may 
be compared to Spinoza's stone ; it was thrown, and it 
thought it was flying. 

The reasons for interpreting things in this way lie in 
the principles of investigation. It is only in this way, 
we are told, that nature can be reduced to natural 
terms, that is, to chemistry, physics, and mechanics. 
Only in this way is it possible to gain a true insight 



292 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



into and understanding of things, and to bring them 
under mathematical formulae. Thus only, too, can " the 
miraculous" be eliminated. For if we are obliged to 
admit that the will has a real influence on the corporeal, 
for instance upon our brain, and nerves, and arm- 
muscles, this would be a violation of the law of the con- 
stancy of the sum of energy. For in this case there would 
occur, at a certain point in the nexus of phenomena, a 
piece of work done, however small it might be, for 
which there was no equivalent of energy in the previous 
constitution. But this is, since the days of Helmholtz, 
an impossible assumption. And thus all those ex- 
periments and theories on what we have called the 
"second line" of mechanistic interpretation of the 
universe show themselves to be relevant to our present 
subject. 

Interpretations of the psychical such as these have 
given rise to four peculiar " isms " of an epistemological 
nature, i.e., related to a theory of knowledge. Not infre- 
quently they are the historical antecedents which result 
in the naturalistic theory of the psychical. These are 
nominalism and sensualism, empiricism and a-posterior- 
ism, which, setting themselves against epistemological 
rationalism, assail the dignity, the independence, and the 
autonomy of the thinking mind. They are so necessarily 
and closely associated with naturalism that their fate is 
intimately bound up with its fate, and they are 
corroborated or refuted with it. And it would be 
possible to conduct the whole discussion with which we 



AUTONOMY OF THE SPIRITUAL 293 



are concerned purely with reference to these four 
"isms.' The strife really begins in their camp. 

The soul is a tabula rasa, all four maintain, a white 
paper on which, to begin with, nothing is inscribed. 
It brings with it neither innate knowledge nor com- 
mands. What it possesses in the way of percepts, 
concepts, opinions, convictions, principles of action, 
rules of conduct, are inscribed upon it through experi- 
ence (empiricism). That is, not antecedent to, but 
subsequent to experience (a posteriori). But experience 
can only be gained through the senses. Only thus 
does reality penetrate into and stamp itself upon 
us. "What was not first in the senses (sensus) 
cannot be in the intelligence." What the senses convey 
to us alone builds up our mental content, from mere 
sensory perceptions upwards to the most abstract ideas, 
from the simplest psychical elements up to the most 
complex ideas, concepts, and conclusions, to the most 
varied imaginative constructions. And in the develop- 
ment of the mental content the "soul" itself is merely the 
stage upon which all that is acquired through the senses 
crowds, and jostles, and unites to form images, percep- 
tions, and precepts. But it is itself purely passive, and 
it becomes what happens to it. Therefore it is not 
really spirit at all, for spirit implies spontaneity, 
activity, and autonomy. 

Philosophy and the mental sciences have always 
had to carry on the strife with these four oppo- 
nents. And it is in the teacup of logic and epis- 



294 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

temology that the storm in regard to theories of the 
universe has arisen. It is there, and not in the 
domain of neurology, or zoology, that the real battle- 
field lies, upon which the controversy must be fought 
out to the end. What follows is only a sort of skirmish 
about the outposts. 

What naturalism holds in regard to the psychical 
and spiritual may be, perhaps, most simply expressed by 
means of an illustration. Over a wide field there glide 
mighty shadows in constant interplay. They expand 
and contract, become denser or lighter, disappear for a 
little, and then reveal themselves again. While they 
are thus forming and changing, one state follows quite 
connectedly on another. At first one is tempted to 
believe that they are self-acting and self-regulating, 
that they move freely and pass from one state to 
another according to causes within themselves. But 
then one sees that they are thrown upon the earth from 
the clouds above, now in this way and now in that, that 
all their states and forms and changes are nothing in 
themselves, and neither effect anything in themselves 
nor react upon the occurrences and realities up above? 
which they only accompany, and by which they are 
determined without any co-operation on their own part, 
even in determining their own form. So it is with 
nature and spirit. Nature is the true effective reality ; 
spirit is its shadow, which effects nothing either w r ithin 
or outside of itself, but simply happens. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL ANSWER 295 



The Fundamental Answer 

How can the religious conception of the world justify 
itself and maintain its freedom in face of such views of 
spirit and spiritual being ? It is questionable whether 
it is worth while attempting to do so. Is not the 
essence of the validity and freedom of spirit made most 
certain simply through the fact that it is able to inquire 
into it ? If we leave popular naturalism out of the 
question, is not the attempt made by scientific natural- 
ism the best witness against itself? For scientific 
study, and the establishment of fundamental conceptions 
and guiding principles are only possible if mind and 
thought are free and active and creative. The direct 
experience that spirit has of itself, of its individuality 
and freedom, of its incomparability with all that is 
beneath it, is far too constant and genuine to admit of 
its being put into a difficulty by a doctrine which it 
has itself established. And this doctrine has far too 
much the character of a " fixed theory " to carry 
permanent inward conviction with it. Here again, 
the mistake made is in starting with scepticism and 
with the fewest and simplest assumptions. It is by no 
means the case that in order to discover the truth we 
must start always from a position of scepticism, in- 
stead of from calm confidence in ourselves and in our 
conviction that we possess in direct experience the 
best guarantee of truth. For we experience nothing 
more certainly than the content and riches of our own 



296 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



mind, its power of acting and creating, and all its great 
capacities. And it is part of the duty laid upon us 
by the religious conception of the universe, as well as 
by all other idealistic conceptions, to follow this path 
of self-assurance alone, that is, through self-development 
and self-deepening, through self-realisation and self- 
discipline, to use to the full in our lives all that we 
have in heart and mind as possibilities, tendencies, 
content, and capacities, and so practically to experience 
the reality and power of the spiritual that the mood of 
suspicion and distrust of it must disappear. The 
validity of this method is corroborated by all the critical 
insight into the nature of our knowledge that we have 
gained in the course of our study, and it might be 
deepened in regard to this particular case. For here, if 
anywhere, we must recognise the limitations of our 
knowledge ; the impossibility of attaining to a full 
understanding of the true nature and depths of things 
applies to the inquiring mind and its hidden nature. 
From Descartes to Leibnitz, Kant, and Fries, down to 
the historian of materialism itself, F. A. Lange, it has 
been an axiom of the idealistic philosophy, expressed 
now in dogmatic, now in critical form, that the mathe- 
matical-mechanical outlook and causal interpretation of 
things, not excluding a naturalistic psychology, is 
thoroughly justifiable as a method of arranging scien- 
tifically the phenomena accessible to us and of pene- 
trating more deeply towards an understanding of these. 
It is, indeed, justifiable, so long as it does not profess 



THE FUNDAMENTAL ANSWER 297 



to reveal the true nature of things, but remains con- 
scious of the free spirit, whose own work and under- 
taking the whole is. 

Yet here again it is by no means necessary to 
surrender to naturalism a field which it has tried to 
take possession of, but is certainly unable to hold. We 
need not try to force naturalism to read out of 
empirical psychology the high conclusions as to human 
nature and spirit which pertain to the religious outlook, 
or to find in the " simplicity " of the " soul monad " a 
kind of physical proof of its indestructibility, or anything 
of that kind. W e maintain that to comprehend the 
true inwardness of the vitality, freedom, dignity, and 
power of the spirit is not the business of psychology at 
all, but may perhaps be dealt with in ethics, if it be 
not admitted that with these concepts one has already 
entered the realm of religious experience, and that they 
are the very centre of religious theory. But un- 
doubtedly we must reject in great measure the claims 
which naturalism makes upon our domain, and maintain 
that the most important starting-points for the higher 
view are to be found in the priority of everything 
spiritual over everything material, in the underivability 
of the spiritual and the impossibility of describing it in 
corporeal-mathematical terms and concepts. 



298 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Individual Development 

What lives in us, as far as we can perceive and trace 
it in its empirical expression, is not a finished and 
spiritual being that leaps, mature and complete, from 
some pre-existence or other into its embodied form, but 
is obviously something that only develops and becomes 
actual very gradually. Its becoming is conditioned 
by " stimuli," influences, impressions from without, and 
perfects itself in the closest dependence upon the 
becoming of the body, is inhibited or advanced with it, 
and may be entirely arrested by it, forced into abnormal 
developments which never attain to the level of an " ego 11 
or "personality," but remain incomprehensible anomalies 
and monstrosities. In general, the psychical struggles 
slowly and laboriously free from purely vegetative and 
physiological processes, and gains control over itself and 
over the body. Its self-development and concentra- 
tion to full unity and completeness of personality is only 
achieved through the deepest self-culture, through com- 
plete " simplification " as the ancients said, through 
great acts and experiences of inward centralisation such 
as that which finds religious expression in the metaphor 
of " regeneration." What " building up " and self- 
development of the psychical means remains obscure. 
If we think of it as a summation, an adding on of new 
parts and constituents, and thus try to form a con- 
crete image of the process, we spoil it altogether. If we 
speak of the transition from the potential to the actual, 



INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT 299 



from the tendency to the realisation, we may not indeed 
spoil it, but we have done little to make the process 
more intelligible. So much only we can say : certain 
as it is that the Psyche, especially as conscious inner 
life, only gradually develops and becomes actual, and 
that in the closest dependence upon the development, 
maturing, and establishment of the nervous basis and 
the bodily organisation in general, yet the naturalistic 
view, a fortiori the materialistic, is never at any point 
correct. There are three things to be borne in mind. 
First, the origin, the " whence " of the psychical is 
wholly hidden from us, and, notwithstanding the theory 
of evolution and descent, it remains an insoluble riddle. 
And secondly, however closely it is associated with and 
tied down to the processes of bodily development, it is 
never at any stage of its development really a function 
of it in actual and exact correspondence and dependence. 
And finally, the further it advances in its self-realisation, 
the further the relation of dependence recedes into the 
background, and the more do the independence and 
autonomy of the psychical processes become prominent. 

We have still to consider and amplify this in several 
respects, and then we may go on to still more important 
matters. 

UXDERIVABILITY 

The first of the three points we have called attention 
to has, so to speak, become famous through the lectures 
of du Bois-Reymond, which attracted, much attention, 
on "The Limits of Natural Knowledge," 1 and "The Seven 



300 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Riddles of the Universe." That these thoughtful 
lectures made so great an impression did not mean that 
a great new discovery had been made, but was rather a 
sign of the general lack of reflection on the part of the 
public, for they only expressed what had always been 
self-evident, and what had only been forgotten through 
thoughtlessness, or concealed by polemical rhetoric. 
Consciousness, thought, even the commonest sensation 
of pleasure and pain, or the simplest sense-perception, 
cannot be compared with " matter and energy," with 
the movements of masses. They represent a foreign 
and altogether inexplicable guest in this world of 
matter, molecules, and elements. Even if we could 
follow the play of the nervous processes with which 
sensation, consciousness, pain, or pleasure are bound up, 
into their most intricate and delicate details, if we could 
make the brain transparent, and enlarge its cells to the 
size of houses, so that, with searching glance, we could 
count and observe all the processes, and even follow the 
dance of the molecules within it, we should never see 
" pain," " pleasure," or " thought," or anything more 
than bodies and their movements. A thought, such as, 
for instance, the perception that two and two make four, 
is not long or broad, above or beneath ; it cannot be 
measured or weighed in inches or pounds like matter, 
tested with the manometer, thermometer, or electro- 
meter for its potential or intensity and tension, 
measured by amperes or volts or horse-powers like 
energies and electric currents ; it is something wholly 



UN DERI V ABILITY 



301 



different, which can be known only through inner 
experience, but which is much better known than any- 
thing else whatever, and which it is absolutely impos- 
sible to compare with anything but itself. Even if we 
admit that it can only become actual and develop as 
an accompaniment of processes within bodies, and only 
within those bodies we call " living,' 1 and that wherever 
bodies exist psychical phenomena occur ; even if we 
were able, as we never shall be able, to produce living 
beings artificially in a retort, and even if psychical 
phenomena occurred in these also, we should still have 
made no progress towards explaining what the psychical 
really is. It would still only be the blazing up in these 
bodies of a flame which, in some inexplicable way, had 
fallen upon them, and associated itself with them. We 
do not doubt that this association, where it takes place, 
does so in obedience to the strictest law and the most 
inexorable necessity ; therefore, that wherever and how- 
ever the corporeal conditions are produced, sensation 
and consciousness will awaken. For we believe in a 
world governed by law. But the mystery is in no way 
lessened by this, and the modern theory of evolution 
throws no light into this utterly impenetrable darkness. 
In the first place, the whole idea of " explaining " in 
terms of " evolution " is a futile one. The process of 
becoming is pictured as a simple process of cumulation, 
a gradual increase of intensities, while the business is 
really one of change in quality and the introduction of 
what is new. In the second place, the occurrence even 



302 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

of the first and most primitive sensation contains the 
whole riddle concentrated on a single point. In the 
third place, the riddle meets us anew and undiminished 
in every developing individual. For to say that the 
physical inwardness, once it has arisen, is " transmitted," 
is not an explanation but merely an admission that the 
riddle exists. And the idea that the psychical is 
just a penumbra or shadow of reality, which comes of 
itself and so to speak gratis, is quite inadmissible from 
the point of view of strict natural science. There are 
no longer luxus and lusus naturae. Reality cannot 
throw a " shadow." According to the principles of the 
conservation of matter and energy, we must be able to 
show whence it gets the so-called shadow, and with 
what it compensates for it. 

Pre-eminence of Consciousness 

But we have already spent too much time over this 
naive mode of looking at things, which, though it 
professes to place things in their true light, in reality 
distorts them and turns them upside down. As if 
this world of the external and material, all these bodies 
and forces, were our first and most direct data, and 
were not really all derived from, and only discoverable 
by, consciousness. We have here to do with the 
ancient view of all philosophy and all reflection in 
general, although in modern days it has taken its 
place as a great new discovery even among naturalists 
themselves, by whom it is extolled and recognised as 



PRE-EMINENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 303 

" the conquest of materialism." Such exaggerated 
emphasis tends to conceal the fact that this truth 
has been regarded as self-evident from very early 
times. 

What is a body, extension, movement, colour, smell 
and taste ? What do I possess of them, or know of 
them, except through the images, sensations and feel- 
ings which they call up in my receptive mind ? No 
single thing wanders into me as itself, or reveals itself 
to me directly ; only through the way in which they 
affect me, the peculiar changes which they work in 
me, do things reveal to me their existence and their 
special character. I have no knowledge of an apple- 
tree or of an apple, except through the sense percep- 
tions they call up in me. But these sense perceptions, 
what are they but different peculiar states of my 
consciousness, peculiar determinations of my mind ? I 
see that the tree stands there, but what is it to see ? 
What is the perception of a colour, of light, of shade, 
and their changes ? Surely only a peculiar change of 
my mind itself, a particular state of stimulus and 
awareness brought about in myself. And in the same 
way I can feel that the apple lies there. But what is 
the perception of resistance, of hardness, of impenetra- 
bility ? Nothing more than a feeling, a change in my 
psychical state, which is unique and cannot be described 
in terms of anything but itself. Even as regards 
" attraction and repulsion," external existence only 
reveals itself to us through changes in the mind and 



304 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



consciousness, which we then attribute to a cause out- 
side ourselves. 

It is well enough known that this simple but incon- 
trovertible fact has often led to the denial of the 
existence of anything outside of ourselves and our 
consciousness. But even if we leave this difficult sub- 
ject alone, it is quite certain that, if the question as 
to the pre-eminence of consciousness and its relation 
to external things is to be asked at all, it should be 
formulated as follows, and not conversely : " How can 
I, starting from the directly given reality and certainty 
of consciousness and its states, arrive at the certainty 
and reality of external things, substances, forces, physics 
and chemistry ? " 

Creative Power of Consciousness 

To this insight into the underivability and pre- 
eminence of consciousness over the world of external 
reality there must be added at this stage a recognition 
of its peculiar creative character. We have here to 
recognise that consciousness itself creates its world, — 
that is, the world that becomes our own through actual 
experience, possession, and enjoyment. We are led to this 
position even by the conception now current in natural 
science of the world as it is, not as it is mirrored in 
consciousness, and the theory of the "subjectivity of 
sensory qualities.'" The qualities which we perceive in 
things through the senses are "subjective" ; philosophy 
has long taught that, and now natural science teaches 



CREATIVE POWER OF CONSCIOUSNESS 305 

it too. That is to say, these qualities are not actually 
present in the things themselves ; they are rather the 
particular responses which our consciousness makes to 
stimuli. Take, for instance, tone or colour. What we 
call tone or sound is not known to acoustics. That takes 
cognisance only of vibrations and the conditions of 
vibration in elastic bodies, which, by means of the ear 
and the nerves of hearing, become a stimulus of con- 
sciousness. Consciousness "responds" to this stimulus 
by receiving a sense-impression of hearing. But in 
this, obviously, there is nothing of the nature of oscilla- 
tions and vibrations, but something quite different. 
What outside of us is nothing more than a complex 
process of movement according to mathematical con- 
ditions, blossoms within us to a world of sound, tone, 
and music. The world itself is soundless, toneless. 
And the same is true of light and colour ; " light " and 
"blue" are nothing in themselves — are not properties 
of things themselves. They are only the infinitely 
rapid movements of an infinitely delicate substance, 
the ether. But when these meet our consciousness, 
they spin themselves within us into this world of light 
and colour, of brilliance and beauty. Thus without us 
there is a world of a purely mathematical nature, 
without quality, charm, or value. But the world we 
know, the world of sound, light, and colour, of all 
properties whatsoever, of the ugly or the beautiful, of 
pain and pleasure, is in the most real sense the product 
of consciousness itself, a creation which, incited by 

u 



306 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

something outside of itself and of a totally different 
nature, which we can hardly call " world," evolves out 
of itself and causes to blossom. No part of this 
creation is given from without ; not the blue of the 
heavens, for outside of us there is no colour, only 
vibrations of the ether ; not the gold of the sun nor 
the red glory of the evening sky. External nature is 
nothing more than the stimulus, the pressure upon 
the mind, which liberates from its depths the peculiar 
reactions and responses to this stimulus, and calls them 
forth from its own treasure-stores. Certainly in this 
creating the consciousness is entirely dependent on the 
impressions stamped on it from outside, and to that 
extent upon " experience." But it is by no means a 
tabula rasa, and a merely passive mirror of the outer 
world, for it translates the stimulus thus received into 
quite a different language, and builds up from it a new 
reality, which is quite unlike the mathematical and 
qualityless reality without. And this activity on the 
part of consciousness begins on the very lowest stages. 
The simplest perception of light or colour, the first 
feeling of pleasure or discomfort, is a reaction of the 
psychical, which brings about something entirely new 
and unique. " The spirit is never passive."" 

That the psychical is not derivable from the physical, 
that it does not arise out of it, is not secondary to it, 
but pre-eminent over it, is not passive but creative ; 
so much we have already gained to set over against 
naturalism. But its claims are even more affected 



CREATIVE POWER OF CONSCIOUSNESS 307 

by the fact of real psychical causality. We need 
not here concern ourselves with the difficult question, 
whether the mind can of itself act upon the body, 
and through it upon the external world. But in the 
logical consistence of naturalism there was implied 
not only a negative answer to this last question, 
but also a denial of the causality of the psychical, 
even within itself and its own domain. This is 
well illustrated in the figure of the cloud shadows. 
In consciousness state follows upon state, a upon b, b 
upon c. According to naturalism, b is not really the 
result of a, nor c of b, for in that case there would be 
independence of phenomena, and distinctness of laws in 
the psychical. But as all the states, a, b, and c, of the 
cloud shadows, depend upon states a, 5, and c, of the 
clouds themselves, but do not themselves form a con- 
catenation of causes, so all the states of the mind 
depend upon those of the body, in which alone there 
is a true chain of causes because they alone have true 
reality. 

This is a complete distortion of the facts of the case. 
It would never be possible to persuade oneself or any 
one else that the arm, for instance, did not bend simply 
because we willed that it should. And it is still less 
possible to doubt that there are sequences of causes 
within the psychical, that in the world of thought and 
feeling, of desire and will, one thing calls up another, 
awakes it, impels it onwards, and influences it. Indeed, 
the mode of influence is peculiarly rich, subtle, and 



308 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



certain. Mental images and experiences arouse joy or 
sorrow, admiration or repulsion. One image calls up 
another, forces it to appear according to quite peculiar 
laws, or may crowd it out. Feelings call up desires, 
desires lead to determination. Good news actually 
causes joy, this is actually strengthened to willing, and 
the new situation gives rise to actual resolves. All this 
is so obvious and so unquestionable that no naturalism 
can possibly prevail against it. It has also long been 
made the subject of special investigation and care- 
fully regulated experiment, and it is one of the chief 
subjects of modern psychological science. And espe- 
cially as regards the different forms of " association of 
ideas," the particular laws of this psychical causality 
have been established. 

It cannot be denied, however, that this psychology of 
association has itself in a deeper sense certain dangers 
from the point of view of the freedom of the mind, and 
it is apt to lead, not indeed to naturalistic conceptions, 
but to views according to which the " soul " is reduced 
to the level of a passive frame and stage, so to speak, for 
the exhibition of mental mechanics and statics. 
" Ideas " or thoughts, or states of feelings, are some- 
times represented almost as actual little realities, which 
come and go in accordance with their own laws of 
attraction and repulsion, unite and separate again, by 
virtue of a kind of mental gravitation, move and crowd 
one another, so that one must almost say " it thinks," 
as one says " it rains," and not " the mind thinks " or " I 



CREATIVE POWER OF CONSCIOUSNESS 309 



think. " But more of this later. This psychological 
orderliness is in sharp antagonism to pure naturalism. 
It describes the laws of a sequence of causes, which have 
nothing to do with the physical, chemical, or mechani- 
cal, and clearly establishes the uniqueness, independence, 
and underivability of the psychical as contrasted with 
the physical. 

The individuality and incommensurability of this 
psychical causality shows itself in another series of 
factors which make even the form of the psychical 
process quite distinctive, and produce phenomena which 
have no parallel in the material sequences of the world, 
indeed, conflict with all its fundamental laws. The 
great psychologists of to-day, Wundt in particular, and 
James, have frequently emphasised these factors. We 
can only briefly call attention to a few points, as, for 
instance, Wundt 's theory of the creative resultants 
through which the psychical processes show themselves 
to be quite outside of the scope of the laws oi 
equivalence which hold good in the physical. If, in the 
realm of the corporeal, two components of energy, a and 
b, come together, they unite in a common resultant c, 
which includes in part a new movement, in part trans- 
formation into heat, but always in such a way that c 
remains equal to a and b. But it is otherwise in the 
psychical. Here there occurs what may be called an in- 
crease (and a qualitative change) of the psychical energy. 
If we take the notes, c, e, and g, and call the sensation- 
and perception- value of the individual notes x, y, z, 



310 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



when they come together, the resulting sensation-value 
is by no means simply x + y + z, for a " harmony " 
results of which the effect is not only greater than the 
mere sum of x + y + z, but is qualitatively different. 
This is true of all domains of psychical experience. The 
parallels from mechanical operation cannot be applied 
in any case. These only supply inadequate analogies and 
symbols which never really represent the actual state of 
the case. 

Let us take, for instance, a motive, m, that impels us 
towards a particular action, and another, n 9 that 
hinders us. If these meet in us, the result is not 
simply a weakening of the power of the one, and a 
remaining motive of the strength of m minus n. The 
meeting of the two creates an entirely new and 
peculiar mental situation, which gives rise to conflict 
and choice, and the resultant victorious motive is 
never under any circumstances ra-w, but may be a 
double or three-fold m or n. Thus, in the different 
aspects of psychical activity, there are factors which 
make it impossible to compare these with other activi- 
ties, remove them outside of the scope of the law of the 
equivalence of cause and effect, and prove that there 
is self-increase and growth on the part of psychical 
energies. And all such phenomena lead us away from 
the standpoint of any mere theory of association. 



ACTIVITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 311 



Activity of Consciousness 

Naturalism takes refuge in the doctrine of associa- 
tion, when it does not attain anything with its first 
claims, and applies this theory in such a way that it 
seems possible from this standpoint to interpret 
mental processes as having an approximate resem- 
blance to mechanically and mathematically calculable 
phenomena. As in physics the molecules and atoms, so 
here the smallest mental elements, the simplest units of 
feeling are sought for, and from their relations of attrac- 
tion and repulsion, their groupings and movements, 
it is supposed that the whole mental world may be 
constructed up to its highest contents, will, ideals, and 
development of character. But even the analogy, the 
model which is followed, and the fact that a model is 
followed at all, show that this method is uncritical and 
not unprejudiced. What reason is there for regarding 
occurrences in the realm of physics as a norm for the 
psvchical ? Why should one not rather start from the 
peculiar and very striking differences between the two, 
from the primary and fundamental fact, not indeed 
capable of explanation, but all the more worthy of 
attention on that account, that there is an absolute 
difference between physical occurrences and mental 
behaviour, between physical and mental causality? 
These most primitive and simplest mental elements 
which are supposed to float and have their being within 
the mind as in a kind of spiritual ether are not atoms 



312 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



at all, but deeds, actions, performances. The laws of 
the association of ideas are not the laws of a mental 
chemistry, but laws of mental behaviour ; very fixed 
and reliable laws, but still having to do with modes 
of behaviour. Their separating and uniting, their 
a b c 



«2 






b2 



a and b only associated. a and b really synthetised 

Squares of a and b in to c. Square of a + b 

juxtapositon. as a true unity = c2. 

relations to one another, their grouping into unities, 
their " syntheses," are not automatic permutations and 
combinations, but express the activity of a thinking 
intelligence. Not even the simplest actual synthesis 
comes about of itself, as psychologists have shown by a 
neat illustration. 

Given that, through some association, the image of 
the line a calls up that of the line b, and both are 
associatively ranged together, we have still not made the 
real synthesis a + b = c. For to think of a and b side 
by side is not the same thing as thinking of c, as we 
shall readily see if we square them. The squares of a and 
b thought of beside one another, that is, a 2 and b 2 , are 
something quite different from the square of the really 



THE EGO 



313 



synthetised a and b, which is (a + b) 2 = a 2 + 2 ab + 6 2 , 
or c 2 . This requires quite a new view, a spontaneous 
synthesis, which is an action and not a mere experience. 

The Ego 

It was customary in earlier psychology, as it still is 
in all apologetic psychology, to regard the soul as a 
unified, immaterial, indivisible and therefore indestruc- 
tible substance, as a monad, which, as a unity without 
parts, superior to its own capacities and the changes of 
its states, is at all times one and the same subject. 
Many attempts have been made since the time of 
Plotinus to accumulate proofs of this substantial unity. 
We may leave this question untouched here, and need 
not even inquire whether these definitions are not 
themselves things of the external world employed as 
images and analogies and pushed too far. But there 
are three factors which may be established in regard to 
the psychical in spite of all naturalistic opposition; 
and those who have attempted to find proofs for the 
traditional idea we have noted, have usually really had 
these three in mind, and quite rightly so : they are, 
self-consciousness, the unity of consciousness, and 
the consciousness of the ego. 

Self-Consciousness 
1. Our consciousness is not merely a knowledge of 
many individual things, the possession of concrete and 
abstract, particular or general conceptions and ideas, 
the cherishing of sensations, feelings and the like. We 



814 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



not only know, but we know that we know, and we can 
ponder in thought over the very fact that we are able 
thus to reflect in thought. Thought can turn its 
attention upon itself, can establish that it takes place, 
and how it runs its course, can reflect upon the forms 
in which it expresses itself, its powers, its laws, 
possibilities, and limits, and can ponder over the general 
nature of thought and the contingent individual nature 
of the particular thinking subject. (The very possi- 
bility and preliminary condition of moral freedom is 
implied in this.) How naturalism is to do justice to 
this fact it is not easy to see. Even if it were possible 
that the mental content was gained through mere 
experience, that comparisons, syntheses, and abstractions 
were formed simply according to the laws of association, 
and that these were sublimed and refined to general 
ideas, and could grow into axioms of logic and of 
geometry, or crystallise into necessary and axiomatic 
principles — none of which can happen — yet it would 
always be a knowledge of something. But how this 
something could be given to itself remains undis- 
coverable. The soul is a tabula rasa and a mere mirror, 
says this theory. But it would still require to show 
how the silver layer behind the mirror began to see 
itself in the mirror. 

The Unity of Consciousness 

2. The same holds true of the unity of consciousness, 
of which we are directly convinced. It is quite inexpli- 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE EGO 



315 



cable if consciousness is a function of the extended and 
divisible physical substratum which is built up of 
nerve-cells and nerve-fibres. And yet this unity is the 
fundamental condition of our whole inner life. 

Even the facts of association demonstrate it. Two 
images could not come together, the one could not call 
up the other, if they were not possessed in the same 
consciousness, and could unite in it. It is the pre- 
liminary condition of every higher mode of thought, 
of every relating of things, of every comparison and 
abstraction. No j udgment can be formed, no conclusion 
drawn without this. How could a predicate become 
associated with its subject, or a principal clause with 
its subordinate clause, if they were in separate con- 
sciousnesses, and how could the conclusion be drawn 
from them ? 

Consciousness of the Ego 
3. This unified self-consciousness is consciousness 
of the ego. It is only by means of an artificial 
abstraction that we can leave out of account in the 
consideration of processes of thought the peculiar factor 
of personal relationship that absolutely attaches to 
every thought within us. There are no thoughts in 
general that play their part of themselves alone. " It ^ 
never 44 thinks " in me. On the contrary, all sensation, 
thought, and will has in every human being a peculiar 
central relationship to which we refer when we say 44 my 
idea," 44 my sensation." What the 44 1" is cannot be 
defined. It is that through which the relation of all 



816 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



experiences and actions is referred to a point, and 
through which the treasuring of them for good or ill, 
the appreciation, the valuation of them is accomplished. 
And it plays its part even in the case of cold and 
indifferent items of knowledge. For instance, that 
twice two are four is not simply a perception, it is my 
perception. Of the ego itself nothing more can be said 
than that it is the thought of me as the subject of all 
experience, willing, and action, and if we try to take 
hold of it nothing more than this formula remains. 
Yet the fact that the ego is the subject of all this, gives 
conduct, will, and experience that peculiar character 
which distinguishes them from mere action and re- 
action. For it is directly certain that all the 
psychical contents are not only co-existences in one 
consciousness but that they are possessed by it. 

Thus in summing up we have to say, that it is through 
the ego that all psychical activities and experiences 
are centred and related, that the ego is itself the 
point of relation, that it is the reason of the unity of 
consciousness and of the possibility of self-consciousness, 
and that in all this it is the most certain reality, 
without which the simplest psychical life would be 
impossible. At the same time, it is difficult to state 
what the " ego " is in itself, apart from the effects in 
which it reveals itself. 



CHAPTER XI 



FKEEDOM OF SPIRIT 

The consciousness of the ego leads us naturally to 
the consciousness of freedom. Freedom of the mind is 
no simple idea; it embraces various contents which 
bear the relation of stages to one another, and each 
higher stage presupposes the one below it. Freedom 
is, first of all, the word which expresses that we are 
really agents, not mere points of transit for phenomena 
foreign to ourselves, but starting-points of phenomena 
peculiar to us, actual causes, beings who are able to 
initiate activity, to control things and set them in 
motion. Here the whole question of freedom becomes 
simply the question of the reality and causality of the 
will. Is the will something really factual, or is it only 
the strange illusion to which Spinoza, for instance, 
referred in his illustration of the flying stone ? It 
would be purely an illusion of that kind if materialism 
were the true interpretation of things, and the psychical 
were nothing more than an accompaniment of other 
" true " realities, and even if the doctrine of psychical 
atoms we have already mentioned were correct. 

This idea of freedom speedily rises to a higher plane. 



318 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Freedom is always freedom from something, in this 
case from a compulsion coming from outside, and from 
things and circumstances foreign to us. In maintaining 
freedom of the mind it is asserted that it can preserve 
its own nature and laws in face of external compulsion 
or laws, and in face of the merely psychological com- 
pulsion of the u lower courses of thought," even from the 
" half-natural " laws of the association of ideas. Thus 
" freedom " is pre-eminently freedom of thought. And 
in speaking thus we are presupposing that the mind has 
a nature of its own, distinguished even from the purely 
psychological nature, and has a code of laws of its 
own, lying beyond the scope of all natural laws, which 
psychical motives and physical conditions may prevent 
it following, but which they can never suspend or pull 
down to their own level. 

" Der Mensch ist frei, und war 1 er in Ketten geboren." 

Here at last we arrive at what is so often exclusively, 
but erroneously, included under the name of freedom, 
or " freedom of the will," that is practical freedom, the 
freedom to recognise moral laws and ideals, and to 
form moral judgments against all psychological com- 
pulsion, and to will to allow ourselves to be deter- 
mined by these. From this question of moral freedom 
we might finally pass to that with which it is usual 
over-hastily to begin : the problem of so-called freedom 
of choice, of the " equilibrium " of the will, a problem 
in which are centred all the purely theoretical interests 
of the doctrine of the will in general, and ethical 



FREEDOM OF SPIRIT 



319 



interests in particular. The whole domain is so enormous 
that we cannot even attempt to sketch it here. The 
general bearing of the whole can be made clearest at 
the second stage, but we cannot entirely pass over the 
first. 

In this inquiry into the problem of the will it is not 
necessary to discuss whether we are able by it to bring 
about external effects, movements, and changes in our 
bodies. We may postpone this question once more. 
The most important part of the problem lies in the 
domain of the psychical. To move an arm or a leg is a 
relatively unimportant function of the will as compared 
with the deliberate adoption of a rule of conduct, with 
inward self-discipline, self-culture, and the development 
of character. 

That we " will," and what it is to will, cannot really 
be demonstrated at all, or defended against attacks. 
It simply is so. It is a fundamental psychical fact 
which can only be proved by being experienced. If 
there were anywhere a will-less being, I could not prove 
to him that there is such a thing as will, because I 
could never make clear to him what will is. And the 
theories opposed to freedom of the will cannot be 
refuted in any way except by simply saying that they 
are false. They do not describe what really takes 
place in us. We do not find within ourselves either 
the cloud-shadows or the play of psychicaL minima 
already referred to, with their crowding up of images, 
bringing some into prominence and displacing them 



320 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



again while we remain passive — we find ourselves 
willing. These theories should at least be able to ex- 
plain whence came this marvellous hallucination, this 
appearance of will in us, which must have its cause, 
and they should also be able to say whence came the 
idea of the will. Spinoza's example of the stone, which 
seemed to itself to fly when it was simply thrown, does 
not meet the facts of the case. If the thrown stone 
had self-consciousness, it would certainly not say, " I 
am flying," but would merely wonder, " What has 
happened to me suddenly ? " 

We cannot demonstrate what will is, we can only 
make it clear to ourselves by performing an act of will 
and observing ourselves in the doing of it. Let us 
compare, for instance, a psychical state which we call 
" attention " with another which we call " distraction." 
In this last there is a stage where the will rests. There 
is actually an uninhibited activity of "the lower course 
of thought," a disconnected " dreaming," a confused 
automatic movement of thoughts and feelings according 
to purely associative laws. Then suddenly we pull 
ourselves together, rouse ourselves out of this state of 
distraction. Something new comes into the course of 
our thoughts. It is the will. Now there is control 
and definite guidance of our thoughts and rejection of 
subsidiary association — ideas that thrust themselves 
upon us. Particular thoughts can be selected, par- 
ticular feelings or mental contents kept in focus as long 
as we desire. In thus selecting and guiding ideas, in 



FREEDOM OF SPIRIT 



321 



keeping them in mind or letting them go, we see the 
will in action. 

This brings us to freedom of thought. This lies in 
the fact, not merely that we can think, but that we can 
and desire to think rightly, and that we are able to 
measure our thoughts by the standard of " true " or 
" false.'" Naturalism is proud of the fact that it 
desires nothing more than to search after truth. To 
this it is ready to sacrifice all expressions of feeling or 
sentiment, and all prejudices. The truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth is its ideal, even if all 
pet ideas have to give way before it. It usually 
saddles itself with the idea of the good and the beau- 
tiful along with this " idea of truth," but is resolved, 
since it must soon see for itself that it is able to secure 
only a very doubtful basis for these, to sacrifice them to 
truth if need be. This is worthy of honour,* but it 
implies a curious self-deception. For if naturalism be 
in the right, thought is not free, and if thought be not 
free there can be no such thing as truth, for there can 
be no establishing of what truth is. 

Let us attempt to make this plain in the following 
manner : According to the naturalistic-psychological 
theory, the play of our thoughts, our impressions of 
things and properties, their combination in judgments, 
or in " perceptions," are dependent on physiological 

* Though somewhat inconsequent, since at any rate the enthu- 
siasm for truth could not result from a naturalistic, but only from 
some kind of idealistic basis. 



X 



322 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



processes of the brain, and therefore upon natural laws, 
or, according to some, on peculiar attractions and repul- 
sions among the impressions themselves, regulated by 
the laws of association. If that and that only were 
the case, I should be able to say that such a conception 
was present in my mind, or that this or that thought 
had arisen in me, and I might perhaps be able to trace 
the connection which made it necessary that it should 
arise at that particular time. But every thought would 
be equally right. Or rather there could be no question 
of right or wrong in the matter at all. I could not 
forbid any thought to be there, could not compel it to 
make way for another, perhaps exactly its opposite. Yet 
I do this continually. I never merely observe what 
thoughts are in my own mind or in another's. For I 
have a constant ideal, a plumb-line according to which 
I measure, or can measure ; every train of thought. And 
I can compel others to apply this same plumb-line to 
their thoughts. This plumb-line is logic. It is the 
unique law of the mind itself which concerns itself about 
no law of nature or of association whatsoever. And 
however mighty a flood of conceptions and associations 
may at times pour through me in consequence of various 
confused physiological states of excitement affecting 
the brain, or in consequence of the fantastic dance of 
the associations of ideas, the ego is always able in free 
thought to intervene in its own psychical experiences, 
and to test which combinations of ideas have been 
logically thought out and are therefore right, and 



FREEDOM OF SPIRIT 



323 



which are wrong. It often enough refrains from exer- 
cising this control, leaving the lower courses of thought 
free play. Hence the mistakes in our thinking, the 
errors in judgment, the thousand inconsistencies and 
self-deceptions. But the mind can do otherwise, can 
defend itself from interruptions and extraneous in- 
fluences by making use of its freedom and of its power 
to follow its own laws and no others. It is thus pos- 
sible for us to have not only psychical experiences 
but knowledge ; only in this way can truth be reached, 
and error rejected. Thus science can follow a sure 
course. Thus alone, for instance, could the great 
edifice of geometry and arithmetic have been built up in 
its indestructible certainty. The progress from axiom 
to theorem and to all that follows is due to free thought, 
obeying the laws of inference and demonstration, and 
entirely unconcerned about the laws of association 
or the natural laws of the nervous agitations, the electric 
currents, and other plays of energy which may go on 
in the brain at the same time. What have the laws of 
the syllogism to do with the temporary states of ten- 
sion in the brain, which, if they had free course, would 
probably follow lines very different from those of Euclid, 
and if they chanced once in a way to follow the right 
lines from among the millions of possibilities, would 
certainly soon turn to different ones, and could never 
examine them to see whether they were right or not. 
Thus it is not any highly aspiring emotional desire or 
any premature prejudice, but the solid old science 



324 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



of logic that first and most determinedly shuts the 
door in face of the claims of naturalism. If we com- 
bine this with what has already been said on page 154, 
we shall see how dangerous it would be for naturalism 
to be proved right in the dispute ; for then it would be 
wholly wrong. 

For, as it is only through the free, thinking mind 
that true and false can be distinguished and brought 
into relation with things, so only through it can we 
have an ideal of truth to be recognised and striven 
after, and that spontaneous, pertinacious, searching, fol- 
lowing, and discovering which constitutes science as a 
whole and in detail. And in so far as naturalism itself 
claims to be nothing more than an attempt towards 
this goal, it is itself only possible on the basis of 
something which it denies. 

Freedom of thought is also the most obvious example 
of that freedom of the spirit in morally " willing,*' which 
it is the business of ethical science to teach and defend. 
As in the one case thought shows itself superior to the 
physiologically or psychologically conditioned sequence 
of its concepts, so the free spirit, in the uniqueness of 
its moral laws, reveals itself as lord over all the motives, 
the lower feelings of pleasure and pain that have their 
play within us. As in the one case it is free to measure 
according to the criteria of true or false, and thus is 
able to intervene in the sequence of its own concep- 
tions, correcting and confirming, so in the other it is 
able to estimate by the criteria of good or bad. As in 



FREEDOM OF SPIRIT 



325 



the one case it carries within it its own fundamental 
laws as logic, so in the other the moral ideals and 
fundamental judgments which arise out of its own 
being. And in both cases it is free from nature and 
natural law. and capable of subordinating nature to its 
own rules, in so far as it 44 wills," and of becoming 
subordinate to nature — in erroneous thinking and non- 
moral acting — in so far as it does not will. 

Feeling, Individuality, Genius, and Mysticism 

The four things here mentioned are very closely 
associated with one another, especially the second and 
third, as is easily perceived, but the second is rooted in 
the first. And in the second and third there is already 
to be discovered a factor which goes beyond the sphere 
of the purely rational, and is no longer accessible to 
our comprehension, but carries us over into the sphere 
of the fourth. This is really true even of the pheno- 
mena of moral consciousness and moral " freedom. " In 
this quality, and in the ethical ideal of 44 personality," 
there is implied something that is inaccessible to a 
purely rational consideration, and is directly related to 
mystery and divination. (What is 44 personality " ? 
YYe all feel it. We respect it from the depths of our 
soul wherever we meet it. We bow down before it 
unconditionally. But what it is no philosophy has ever 
vet been able definitely to state. In seeking to compre- 
hend it intuition and feeling must always play the 
largest part.) 



326 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



Feeling 

It is in the four attributes here emphasised that the 
true nature of mind in its underivability and superiority 
to all nature first becomes clear. All that we have so far 
considered under the name of mind is only preliminary 
and leads up to this. All reality of external things is 
of little account compared with that of the mind. It 
does not occur to any one in practice to regard anything 
in the whole world as more real and genuine than his own 
love and hate, fear and hope, his pain, from the simplest 
discomfort due to a Avound to the pangs of conscience 
and the gnawings of remorse — his pleasure, from the 
merest comfort to the highest raptures of delight. 
This world of feeling is for us the meaning of all 
existence. The more we plunge ourselves into it, the 
deeper are the intricacies and mysteries it reveals. At 
every point underivable and unintelligible in terms of 
physiological processes, it reveals itself from stage to 
stage as more deeply and wholly unique in its relations, 
interactions, and processes, and grows farther and 
farther beyond the laboured and insufficient schemes 
and formulae under which science desires to range 
all psychical phenomena. 

Individuality 
It is especially in "feeling" that what we call 
individuality has its roots. The individual really means 
the " indivisible, 1 ' and in the strict sense of the word 
need mean nothing more than the ego, and the unity 



INDIVIDUALITY 



327 



of consciousness of which we have already spoken. 
But through a change in the meaning of the word we 
have come to mean much more than that by it. This 
individuality forces itself most distinctly upon our 
attention in regard to prominent and distinguished 
persons. It is the particular determination of their 
psychical nature that marks them out so distinctly, and 
it often rather escapes analysis and characterisation 
than is attained by it. "Individuum est ineffabile." 
It can only be grasped intuitively and by experience. 
And people of a non-reflective mood are usually 
more successful in understanding it than those who 
reflect and analyse. It requires "fine feeling," which 
knows exactly how it stands towards the person in 
question, which yet can seldom give any definite account 
of his characteristics. Individuality usually meets us 
most obviously in exceptional men, and we are apt to 
contrast these with ordinary men. But on closer 
examination we see that this difference is only one of 
degree. " Individuality " in a less marked manner 
belongs to them all, and where it exists it is a distinctly 
original thing, which cannot be derived from its ante- 
cedents. , No psyche is simply derivable from other 
psyches. What a child receives from its parents by 
" heredity " are factors which, taken together, amount to 
more than the mere sum of them. The synthesis of these 
is at once the creation of something new and peculiar, 
and what has been handed down is merely the building 
material. This can be felt in an intensified and striking 



328 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



degree in regard to 44 pronounced individuality," but 
careful study will disclose the fact that there are no 
men quite alike. This kind of 44 creative synthesis/ 1 
that is, the underivability of the individual, was the 
element of truth in the mythologies of 44 creationism " 
held by the Church fathers, or in the theory of the 
44 pre-existence of the soul " maintained by Plato and 
others. 

And from this point of view we must safeguard what 
has already been said in regard to the culture and 
gradual development of our psychical inner nature. 
It is true that the 44 soul " does not spring up ready- 
made in the developing body, lying dormant in it, and 
only requiring to waken up gradually. It really 
becomes. But the becoming is a self-realisation. It 
is not true that it is put together and built up bit by bit 
by experience, so that a different being might develop 
if the experiences were different. It is undoubtedly 
dependent upon experience, impressions, and circum- 
stances, and without these its development would be 
impossible. But these impressions act as a stimulus, 
developing only what is previously inherent. They do 
not themselves create anything. A characteristic pre- 
determination restricts the development to compara- 
tively narrow limits. And this is identical with the 
individuality itself. A man may turn out very different 
according to circumstances, education, influences. But 
he would nevertheless recognise "himself" under any 
circumstances. He will never become anything of which 



GENIUS, MYSTICISM 



329 



he had not the possibility within him from the very 
beginning, any more than the rose will become a 
violet if it is nurtured with a different kind of manure. 

Genius 

We cannot venture to say much about genius and the 
mystery of it. In it and its creative power something 
of the spirit, the nature of the spirit, seems to look up 
at us, as we might think of it in itself and apart from 
the limits of existence in time and space. It is usually 
most obvious and most accessible to us in the domain 
of art. But it has its place too in the realm of science. 
And it is most of all genius, and therefore most in- 
accessible to us ordinary mortals, in the domain of 
religion. 

Mysticism 

Even fc< pronounced individuality " " has an element 
of mysticism " in it — of the non-rational, which we feel 
the more distinctly the more decidedly we reject all 
attempts to make it rational again through crude or 
subtle mythologies. This is much more true of genius, 
artistic insight, and inspiration. But these are much 
too delicate to be exposed to the buffeting of con- 
troversy, much more so the dark and mysterious 
boundary region in the life of the human spirit which 
we know under the name of mysticism in the true sense, 
without inverted commas. It is not a subject that is 
adapted for systematic treatment. Where it has been 
subjected to it, everything becomes crude and repulsive, 



330 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



a mere caricature of pure mysticism like the recru- 
descent occultism of to-day. Therefore it is enough 
simply to call the attention of the sympathetic reader 
to it and then to pass it by. In face of the witness 
borne to it by all that is finest and deepest in history, 
especially in the history of religion, naturalism is 
powerless. 

Mind and Spirit. The Human and the 
Animal Soul 

What is the relation between the human and the 
animal mind ? This has always been a vital question in 
the conflict between naturalism and the religious out- 
look. And as in the whole problem of the psychical so 
here the interest on both sides has been mainly concen- 
trated on the question of "mortality'" or " immortality. " 
Man is immortal because he has a soul. Animals " have 
no souls. 11 " Animals also have souls, differing only in 
degree but not in substantial nature from the soul of 
man : as they are mortal, man must be so too. 11 "Animals 
have minds : the merely psychical passes away with the 
body. But man has spirit in addition. It is imperish- 
able. 11 These and many other assertions were made on 
one side or the other. And both sides made precisely 
the same mistake : they made the belief in the immor- 
tality of our true nature dependent upon a proof that 
the soul has a physical "substantial nature, 11 which 
is to be regarded as an indestructible substance, a kind 
of spiritual atom. And on the other hand they over- 



MIND AND SPIRIT 



331 



looked the gist of the whole matter, the true starting- 
point, which cannot be overlooked if the religious 
outlook is not to be brought into discredit. It is 
undoubtedly a fundamental postulate, and one which 
the religious outlook cannot give up, that the human 
spirit is more than all creatures, and is in quite a 
different order from stars, plants, and animals. But 
absolutely the first necessity from the point of view of 
the religious outlook is to establish the incomparable 
value of the human spirit ; the question of its " substan- 
tial nature " is in itself a matter of entire indifference. 
The religious outlook observes that man can will good 
and can pray, and no other creature can do this. 
And it sees that this makes the difference between two 
worlds. Whether the bodily and mental physics in 
both these worlds is the same or different, is to it a 
matter rather of curiosity than of importance. 

What occurs or does not occur within the animal 
mind is, as a matter of fact, wholly hidden from us. 
"We have no way of determining this except by analogy 
with ourselves, and therefore our idea of it is necessarily 
anthropomorphic. And apologists are undoubtedly 
right when they maintain that this is far too much the 
case. To reach a more unprejudiced attitude towards the 
customary anthropomorphisation of animals, it is profit- 
able to study Wundt's lectures on " The Human and 
the Animal Mind " (see especially Lecture XX.). Per- 
haps it is true that, notwithstanding all the much- 
praised cleverness, intelligence and teachableness of 



332 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



elephants, dogs, and chimpanzees, they are incapable of 
forming "general ideas," "rules,"" and "laws," of 
forming judgments in the strict sense, and constructive 
syllogisms, that they have only associations of ideas, 
and expectations of similar experience, but no thinking 
in conceptual terms, and cannot perceive anything 
general or necessary, that they recognise a posteriori 
but not a priori, as Leibnitz supposed, and that they 
form only perceptual inferences, not judgments from 
experience. But it is not easy to see that this con- 
tributes anything of importance to our problem. It 
does not even help us in regard to the interesting 
question of a physical guarantee for the indestructibility 
of the soul. For even if the psychical acts of animals 
were fewer and less important than they are admitted 
to be, they have certainly sensations, images, feelings, 
pleasure, pain, and desire. All these are of a psychical 
nature, immaterial, and underivable from the material. 
And it is difficult to see, for instance, why the forming 
of judgments should be regarded as more durable and 
indestructible than sensation and desire. The difference 
lies higher than this, — not in the fact that man has a few 
" capacities " more than the animal, but in the difference 
in principle, that the psychical in man can be developed 
to spirit, and that this is impossible anywhere else. The 
very example that naturalism loves to cite in its own 
favour makes its error clear. It asks whether the 
difference, let us say, between a Fuegian and one of the 
higher mammals such as an ape, is not much less than 



MIND AND SPIRIT 



that between a Fuegian and a European. This sounds 
obvious, if we measure simply by habits, morals, and 
possibly also the content of feeling and imagination in 
a " savage " as we find him. And yet it is obviously 
false. I can train a young ape or an elephant, can 
teach it to open wine-bottles and perform tricks. But 
I can educate the child of the savage, can develop in 
him a mental life equal in fineness, depth, and energy, 
frequently more than equal, to that of the average 
European, as the mission to the Eskimos and to the 
Fuegians proves, and as Darwin frankly admitted. 
Psychical capacity is nothing more than raw material. 
It is in the possibility of raising this to the level of 
spirit, of using the raw material to its purpose, that 
the absolute difference, the impassable gulf between 
man and animals lies. 

Even in animals there is a primitive thinking, rising 
above the level of blind instinct. But it can neither 
be schooled, nor is it capable of developing even the 
crudest beginnings of science. Even the animal has a 
sensory satisfaction in colour, form and tone (not nearly 
so much, however, as the theory of sexual selection re- 
quires us to suppose). But art, even the most rudimen- 
tary self-expression of the spirit upon this basis, is wholly 
sealed to it. Even the animal possesses strong altru- 
istic instincts, impulses towards companionship, pairing, 
and caring for its young, and some have seen in this the 
beginnings of morality. But morality is a matter of 
the spirit, which begins with the idea of duty and rises 



334 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



to the recognition of an ideal of life. Nowhere else do 
we see so directly and emphatically the incomparability 
of the natural -psychical and the spiritual as in the idea 
of duty and an ideal of life, although the contrast is 
equally great at all points of the spiritual life. 

Finally and highest of all, we have the capacity of 
the human spirit to rise to religion and the greatest 
heights of feeling. In science and art, in morality and 
religion, the spirit possesses itself. And as such it is a 
unique and strange guest in this world, absolutely 
incomparable with anything beneath or around it. It 
may, perhaps, be true that the psychical difference 
between the ape and man is smaller than that between 
the ape and unicellular organisms (though we really 
can know nothing about that). But nowhere in the 
animal world does the psychical overstep the limits of 
purely natural existence, of striving after and being 
prompted by the directly and purely natural ends of a 
vegetative and animal instinctive life, physical pleasure, 
self-preservation, and the maintenance of the species. 

And there is more than this. However different the 
psychical equipment may be at different animal stages, 
it has one thing in common in them all, it is absolutely 
limited to what is given it by nature. An animal species 
may last for a million years. But it has no history. 
It is and remains the same history-less natural product. 
In this respect the animal is not a step in advance of 
the stone or the crystal. The only thing it can achieve 
is to express more or less perfectly the character of the 



MIND AND SPIRIT 



335 



species. This is the utmost height of its capacity. But 
for man this is only the starting-point, and the really 
human begins just there. What is implicit in him as 
homo sapiens, a member of a zoological order, is nothing 
more than the natural basis upon which, in human and 
individual history, he may build up an entirely unique 
and new creation, an upper story : the world and life 
of the spirit. 

It is also erroneous to regard the gradual develop- 
ment of the psychical capacities at the different levels 
of animal evolution as the development of and 
preparation for the human spirit. It is not the 
spirit, but the raw material of it, that is thus being 
prepared and developed. It is as if, in the history 
of colour manufacture, an " evolution " of colour were 
taking place. The quality of the colour gradually 
becomes better and better. Each generation learns to 
make it purer and more brilliant. But the painting 
which is painted with the most brilliant colour cannot 
be regarded as a link in the evolutionary sequence, and 
is certainly not the crown and culmination of the 
pigment ; the latter is only the gradual perfecting of 
a necessary preliminary condition. 

It is only of secondary interest to point out the 
immense leaps in the evolution of colour and colour- 
technique, and especially the vast difference between the 
last stage and the one before it, or, to drop the meta- 
phor, the enormous psychological differences between 
the animal and the human mind. 



336 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

There is no doubt that an apologetic which interests 
itself in such matters would find abundant opportunity 
for work, and could find a powerful argument against a 
too hasty naturalism in the differences between animal 
and human psychical capacities, which have been recog- 
nised much more sanely and clearly through recent 
investigation than they usually were in earlier times. 
But the question has no special interest for us here. 

Personality 

In as far as man is endowed with a capacity for 
spiritual life and spiritual possession, he is likewise 
destined for personality. This includes and desig- 
nates everything that expresses the peculiar dignity of 
human nature. Personality is a word which gives us 
an inward thrill. It expresses what is most individual 
in us, what is set before us, our highest task and the 
inmost tendency of our being. What is personality ? 
Certainly something which is only a rudiment in us at 
birth, and is not then realised, and at the same time an 
ideal which we feel more or less indistinctly, but 
without being able to outline it clearly. To exhaust 
the idea as far as possible is the task of ethical science. 
But one thing at any rate we can affirm about it with 
certainty : it is absolutely bounded off from the whole 
world and all existence as a self-contained and inde- 
pendent world in itself. The more we become persons, 
the more clearly, definitely, and indissolubly we raise 
ourselves with our spiritual life and spiritual possessions 



PARALLELISM 



337 



out of all the currents of natural phenomena, the 
more do we cease to be mere modes of a general exist- 
ence and happening that flows about us, and in which 
we would otherwise float with vaguely defined outlines. 
A microcosm forms itself in contradistinction to the 
macrocosm, and a unity, a monad, arises, in regard to 
which there is now warrant for inquiring into its dura- 
tion and immortality as compared with the stream of 
general becoming and passing away. For what does it 
matter to religion whether, in addition to physical in- 
divisible atoms, there are spiritual ones which, by reason 
of their simplicity, are indestructible ? But that the 
unities which we call personalities are superior to all 
the manifoldness and diversity of the world, that they 
are not fleeting fortuitous formations among the many 
which evolution is always giving rise to and breaking 
down again, but that they are the aim and meaning of 
all existence, and that as such they are above the 
common lot of all that has only a transient meaning 
and a temporal worth — to inquire into all this and to 
affirm it is religion itself. 

Parallelism 

The independence and underivability of the psychical, 
the incomparability of its uniformities with those of 
mechanical or physico-chemical laws, has proved itself 
so clear and incontrovertible, notwithstanding all the 
distortions of naturalism, that it is now regarded as a 
self-evident fact, not only among philosophers and 

Y 



338 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

epistemologists, and technical psychologists, but for the 
last decade even among all thinking men, and " ma- 
terialism " is now an obsolete position. It was too 
crude and too contrary to all experience to define the 
relation between physical and mental, as if the latter 
were a mere secretion of the former, although a very 
subtle one, or a mere epi-phenomenon of it, in such a 
way that all reality and effectiveness was on the side of 
the physical. 

In place of this, another theory has become wide- 
spread, which claims to define the relation of the two 
series of phenomena better and more adequately : 
the theory of psychophysical parallelism. It is not 
new. There are occasional indications of it even in 
Aristotle's psychology. It was suggested by Descartes 
in his automaton theory, by the occasionalists in 
their parable of the two watches running in exact 
agreement ; it was developed by Spinoza and Leibnitz, 
and refined by the idealistic philosophers, by Schopen- 
hauer, Fechner, and the modern psychologists. The 
form in which it is most prevalent now is that given to 
it by Spinoza, and he is usually referred to in connec- 
tion with it. Its general tenor is as follows : The 
physical cannot be referred back to the psychical, nor 
the psychical to the physical. Both orders of pheno- 
mena run side by side as parallels that never separate. 
Both represent a concatenation of causes complete in 
itself, that is never broken, or interrupted, or com- 
pleted. And in both there is real causality. Thought 



PARALLELISM 



339 



really causes thoughts and feelings. Movement really 
causes movements. But the one series is always strictly 
correlated with the other, and corresponds with it. 
And thus all existence is double, and man is an obvious 
illustration of this. To every thought, feeling, or 
exercise of will there corresponds some excitement, 
movement or change in the body. I will : my arm moves. 
Subtle nervous processes run their course in my brain, 
and I think. That I will has its sufficient reasons, its 
causes lie entirely in the preceding state of my mind, 
in motives of feeling, in ideas which again have their 
efficient causes in a previous psychical condition, and so 
on. And that my arm moves has its efficient cause in 
the stored-up energies of the muscle-substance, in the 
stimulus and impulse conveyed by the motor nerve 
from the brain. And these conditions have their purely 
physiological causes and reasons again in preceding 
purely physiological states and processes. (It goes 
without saying that a mechanical theory of life is the 
necessary presupposition of this parallelistic theory.) 
But both sets of processes correspond exactly one to 
another, and the first is only the inner aspect of the 
second, and the second the outer aspect of the first. 
Thus it is quite true that my arm moves when I will. 
But in reality it is quite as true to say that when 
my arm moves I will. But we must not sub- 
stitute " because 11 for " when." This theory must 
maintain, and does maintain, that even the most 
abstract and subtle ideas, the deepest processes of 



340 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



consciousness, have some corresponding bodily processes, 
either in the brain or in the nervous substance generally, 
and, on the other hand, that no physical process is 
without this psychical inwardness. The result is that 
this inwardness and soul are attributed also to the 
purely material world, the world of " dead 11 matter. 
In this way it is believed that everything gets its due ; 
the thorough mechanical explicability of bodily pheno- 
mena, and the law of the conservation of energy and of 
matter, and, on the other hand, very decisively also, the 
independence and uniqueness of law which can no 
longer be denied to the psychical. And from this 
latter standpoint sharp protests are raised against all 
materialistic distortions. The only thing denied is the 
old idea of the " influxus physicus, 11 the idea, that is, 
that mind can operate beyond itself and take effect on 
the physical world, and conversely the physical world 
upon it. This again is regarded as a breach of the law 
of the conservation of energy. For if the bodily affects 
consciousness, then at a given moment a certain amount 
of energy must be transformed into something that is 
not energy. And if consciousness affects the bodily, a 
process of movement must suddenly occur, for which 
no previous equivalent of energy can be shown. 

This standpoint is most impressively set forth in 
Paulsen's widely read "Introduction to Philosophy. 11 
The same ideas form the central feature in the work of 
Fechner, which is having such a marked renaissance 
to-day. 



PARALLELISM 



341 



It seems as though all higher estimates of spirit, even 
the religious estimate, could quite well rest upon this 
basis. For full scope is here given to the idea that 
mind and the mental sciences have their own par- 
ticular field. God, as the absolute all-consciousness 
and self-consciousness, comprehending within Himself 
all individual consciousness, is thought of as the eternal 
correlate of this universe in space. And the theory has 
room also for a belief in immortality. Of all imagina- 
tive attempts to make the idea of immortality clear 
and possible, undoubtedly that of Fechner is the 
grandest and most effective. And it, too, is based 
entirely upon the idea of parallelism. (Yet as a matter 
of fact it could be shown that neither mortality 
nor immortality really fit into the scheme of this 
conception.) 

Though its main features are very similar as set 
forth by its various champions, this theory differs 
according to the way in which this astonishing and 
mysterious co-ordination, this parallelism itself, is ex- 
plained. How is it that " thought " and " extension " 
can correspond to one another ? 

The answer may be either naively dogmatic, that 
this is one of the great riddles of the universe, and that 
we must simply take it for granted. Others declare 
with Spinoza that the two series of phenomena are 
only the two sides of one and the same fundamental 
being and happening, which may be designated as 
natura sive dens, and that what is inwardly unified 



342 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



expresses itself outwardly in these two forms of being. 
But because both sides, thought and extension, are only 
expressions of one and the same fundamental substance, 
they correspond exactly to one another. The best 
illustration of this is Fechner's simile of the curved 
line. It is concave on one side, convex on the other, 
and thus entirely different on the two sides. But at 
every point the concavity corresponds exactly to the 
convexity. And this is possible because the two are 
the inner and the outer aspects of the same line. 

Others, again, go back to the fundamental ideas of 
critical idealism, and declare the whole extended world 
accessible to the senses and the mechanical-physical 
nexus of cause and phenomena, to be simply the form 
of appearance in which the fundamentally spiritual 
existence presents itself to our senses. Body, move- 
ment, physiological processes, are all nothing more than 
the will, to speak with Fichte and Schopenhauer, or 
the idea, or the spirit itself, which appears thus to 
sensory beings. Other theories, some of them new, are 
also put forward. 

No Parallelism 

For a long time it seemed as if the theory of paral- 
lelism was to gain general acceptance. One might 
write a whole history of the gradually increasing 
criticisms of, and reactions from the academic theories 
which had become almost canonical. But we may here 
confine ourselves to the most general of the objections 
to the parallelistic theory. They apply to the general 



NO PARALLELISM 



343 



idea of parallelism itself, and affect the different stand- 
points of the parallelists in different degrees. The 
theory in no way corresponds to what we find in our- 
selves from direct experience. It is only with the 
greatest difficulty that we can convince ourselves that 
our arm moves only when and not because we will. 
The consciousness of being, through the will, the actual 
cause of our own bodily movements is so energetic and 
direct and certain, that it maintains its sway in spite 
of all objections, and confuses the argument even of 
the parallelists themselves. Usually after they have 
laid the foundations of a purely parallelistic theory, they 
abandon it again as quickly as possible, and revert to 
the expressions and images of ordinary thought. In- 
deed we have no clearer and more certain example of 
causality in general than in our own capacity for con- 
trolling changes in our own bodies. Further, a very 
fatal addition and burdensome accessory of the parallel- 
istic theory is involved in the two corollaries it has 
above and beneath it. On the one hand there is the 
necessity for attributing soul to everything. These 
mythologies of atom-souls, molecule-souls, this hatred 
and love which are the inner aspects even of the simple 
facts of attraction and repulsion among the elements, 
fit better into the nature- philosophy of Empedocles 
and Anaxagoras than into ours. The main support, 
indeed the sole support, of this position is that this 
world of the infinitely little cannot be brought under 
control as far as its " soul w is concerned. Thus we can 



344 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

impute " a soul " to it without danger. On the other 
hand, there is a difficulty which made itself felt even in 
regard to Spinoza's system. All bodily processes must 
have psychical processes corresponding to them, said 
Spinoza. Conversely, all ideas in their turn must have 
bodily processes. To the system including all bodily 
processes corresponds the sum -total of psychical pro- 
cesses. This sum -total we call the soul. And in its 
entirety it is the idea corporis. If " soul " were really 
nothing more than this, the theory of parallelism might 
be right. But it is more than this. It rises above 
itself, and becomes also the idea idece ; it is self-con- 
sciousness and the consciousness of the ego ; it makes 
its own thought and the laws of it, its feelings and their 
intensity — its experiences in short — a subject of thought. 
How does this fit in with parallelism ? Wundt him- 
self, the most notable modern champion of parallelism, 
admits and defines these limits of the parallelistic theory 
on both sides. 

Furthermore, the theory of parallelism, notwith- 
standing its opposition to materialism, must presuppose 
that localisation of psychical processes of which we 
have already spoken, and to which all naturalism 
appeals with so much emphasis. Because of the fact 
that particular psychical functions seem to be limited 
to a particular and definable area of the brain-cortex, 
or to a spot which could be isolated on a particular 
convolution, it seemed as if naturalism could prove that 
"soul" was obviously a function of this particular 



NO PARALLELISM 



345 



organ or part of an organ. According to the theory 
of parallelism this does not follow. It would assert : 
"What in one aspect appears to be a psychical pro- 
cess, appears in another aspect to be a definite physio- 
logical process of the brain." Yet it is clear that in 
order to gain support for the doctrine of mutual cor- 
respondence, parallelism has also the same interest 
in such localisation. For this is the only method by 
which it can empirically control its theory. But this 
whole idea of localisation does not hold good to any- 
thing like the extent to which the members of the 
naturalistic school are wont to assert that it does. 
In regard to this point, too, there has been con- 
siderable disillusioning in recent years. Perhaps all 
that can be said is, that localisation of psychical pro- 
cesses is a fact analogous to the fact that sight is 
associated with the optic nerves and hearing with 
the auditory nerves. Progressive investigation leads 
more and more clearly to the recognition of a fact 
which makes localisation comparatively unimportant, 
namely, the vicarious functioning of different parts of 
the brain. In many cases where this or that " centre " 
is injured, and rendered incapable of function, or even 
extirpated, the corresponding part of the mind is by no 
means destroyed along with it. At first the miud may 
suffer from " the effect of shock " as the phrase runs, 
but gradually it may recover and the same function 
may be transferred to another part of the brain, and 
there be fulfilled sometimes less perfectly, sometimes 



346 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

quite as perfectly as before. We had to deal with this 
fact of vicarious function in discussing the general 
theory of life. It is one of the greatest difficulties in 
the way of the mechanistic and materialistic theories. 
But it must give some trouble to the parallelists too. 

We need not speak of the wonderful duplication of 
all existence which parallelism must establish, though 
it is difficult to evade the question how a natura sive 
deus could have come, so superfluously, to say the same 
thing twice over. Superfluously, for since both are 
alike self-contained and independent of one another, 
one can have no need of the other, 

One objection, however, may be urged against both 
parallelism and materialism, which makes them both 
impossible, and that is, automatism. Both parallelism 
and materialism maintain that the sequence of physical 
processes is complete in itself and can be explained in 
terms of itself. All physical processes ! Not only the 
movements of the stars, the changes in inanimate 
matter, the origin and evolution of the forms of life, 
but also what we call actions, for instance the move- 
ments of our arms and our legs, and the complicated 
processes affecting the breathing organs and tongue, 
which we call " speech." Every plant, every animal, 
every human being must be as it is and where it is, must 
move and act, must perform its functions, which we 
explain as due to love or hate, to fear or hope, even if 
there were no such thing as sensation, will, idea, neither 
love nor hate, fear nor hope. More than this, all that 



NO PARALLELISM 



347 



we call history, building towns and destroying them, 
carrying on war and concluding peace, uniting into 
states and holding national assemblies, going to school 
and exercising mouth and tongue, argument, making 
books and forming letters, writing Iliads, Bibles, and 
treatises on the soul or on free will, holding psychological 
congresses and talking about parallelism; — all this must 
have been done even if there had been no consciousness, 
no psychical activity in any brain ! This is the neces- 
sary consequence to which the theories of parallelism 
and materialism lead. If it does not follow, then there 
was from the outset no meaning in establishing them. 
But the monstrosity of their corollary is fatal to them. 
It is idle to set up theories in which it is impossible to 
believe. 

There is another consideration that affects parallelism 
alone. Since the theory credits each of the two series with 
a closed and sufficient causal sequence, each of which ex- 
cludes the other, it does away with causality altogether. 
That the one line runs parallel with the other excludes the 
idea that a unique system of laws prevails, determining 
the character and course of each line. One of the two 
lines must certainly be dependent, and one must lead. 
Otherwise there can be no distinctness of laws in either. 
Let us recall our illustration of the cloud shadows once 
more ; the changing forms of the shadows correspond 
point for point with those of the clouds only because 
they are entirely dependent upon them. We may 
illustrate it in this way: a parallel may be drawn to 



348 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

an ellipse, it also forms a closed curved line. But 
it is by no means again an ellipse, but is an entirely 
dependent figure without any formula or law of its own. 
Parallelism must make one of its lines the leading one, 
which is guided and directed by an actual causal connec- 
tion within itself. The other line may then run parallel 
with this, but its course must certainly be determined by 
the other. And as the line of corporeal processes, with its 
inviolable nexus of sequences, is not easily broken, paral- 
lelism, after many hard words against materialism, fre- 
quently returns to that again or becomes inconsistent. 
But if one says that the two aspects of phenomena are 
only the forms of one fundamental phenomenon, that 
means taking away actual causality from both alike, and 
leaving only a temporal sequence. For then the actually 
real is the hidden something that throws the cloud- 
shadows to right and left. But in the sequence of 
shadows there is no causal connection, only a series of 
states succeeding one another in time, and this points 
to a causal connection elsewhere. 

It is easy enough to find examples to prove that the 
mental in us influences the bodily. But the most con- 
vincing, deepest and most trustworthy of these are not 
the voluntary actions which are expressed in bodily 
movements, nor even the passions and emotions, the joy 
which makes our blood circulate more quickly, and the 
shame which brings a flush to our foreheads, the sugges- 
tions which work through the mind towards the reviving, 
vitalising or healing of the body, but the cold and 



NO PARALLELISM 



349 



simple course of logical thought itself. Through logi- 
cal thinking we have the power to corrrect the course 
of our conceptions, to inhibit, modify, or logically 
direct the natural course, as it would have been had it 
been brought about by our preceding physiological and 
psychical states, if they were dominant and uncon- 
trolled. But if so, then we must also have the power, 
especially if it be widely true that physiological states 
correspond to psychical states, to influence, inhibit, 
modify the nerve-processes in our brain, or to liberate 
entirely new ones, namely, those that correspond to 
the corrected conceptions. 

The law of the conservation of energy is here ap- 
plied in as distorted a sense as we detected before in 
regard to the general theory of life. And what 
we said there holds good here also. That something 
which is in itself not energetic should determine pro- 
cesses and directions of energy is undoubtedly an 
absolute riddle. But to recognise this is less difficult 
than to accept the impossibilities which mechanism 
and automatism offer us here, even more pronouncedly 
than in regard to the theory of life. Perhaps one of 
the familiar antinomies of Kant shows us the way, 
not, indeed, to find the solution of the riddle, but to 
recognise, so to speak, its geometrical position and 
associations. We have already seen that inquiry into 
the causal conditions of processes lands us in contra- 
dictions of thought, which show us that we can never 
really penetrate into the actual state of the matter. 



350 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

Perhaps we have here to do only with the obverse side 
of the problem dealt with there. There the chain of 
conditions could not be finished because it led on to 
infinity, where, however, it was required that it should 
be complete. Here again the chain is incomplete. In 
the previous case a solution is found through the naive 
proceeding of simply breaking the empirical connec- 
tion of conditions and postulating beginnings in time. 
In this case, the admission of an influocus physicus 
transforms consciousness almost unnoticed into a me- 
chanically operative causality. The proper attitude in 
both cases is a critical one. We must admit that we 
cannot penetrate into the true state of the case, be- 
cause the world is deeper than our knowledge, we must 
reject parallelism as being, like the influocus physicus, an 
unsatisfactory cutting of the critical knot, and we must 
frankly recognise the incontrovertible fact, never indeed 
seriously called in question, of the controlling power of 
the mind, even over the material. 

The Supremacy of Mind 

From the standpoint we have now reached we can 
look back once more on those troublesome naturalistic 
insinuations as to the dependence of the mind upon 
the body, which we have already considered. It is 
evident to us all that our mental development and 
the fate of our inner life are closely bound up with the 
states and changes of the body. And it did not need 
the attacks and insinuations of naturalism to point this 



THE SUPREMACY OF MIND 



351 



out. But the reasons brought forward by naturalism 
are not convincing, and all the weighty facts it adduces 
could be balanced by facts equally weighty on the other 
side. We have already shown that the apparently dan- 
gerous doctrine of localisation is far from being seriously 
prejudicial. But if the dependence of the mind upon 
the body be great, that of the body upon the mind is 
greater still. Even Kant wrote tersely and drily about 
" the power of our mind through mere will to be master 
over our morbid feelings. " And every one who has a 
will knows how much strict self-discipline and firm 
willing can achieve even with a frail and wretched body, 
and handicapped by exhaustion and weakness. Joy 
heals, care wastes away, and both may kill. The 
influence which " blood " and " bile " or any other pre- 
disposition may have upon temperament and character 
can be obviated or modified through education, or 
transformed and guided into new channels through 
strong psychical impressions and experiences, most of 
all by great experiences in the domain of morals and 
religion. No one doubts the reality of those great 
internal revolutions of which religion is well aware, 
which arise purely from the mind, and are able to rid us 
of all natural bonds and burdens. This mysterious 
region of the influence of the mind in modifying bodily 
states or producing new ones is in these days being more 
and more opened up. That grief can turn the hair grey 
and disgust bring out eruptions on the skin has long 
been known. But new and often marvellous facts are 



352 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



being continually added to our knowledge through 
curious experiments with suggestion, hypnosis, and 
auto-suggestion. And we are no longer far from be- 
lieving that through exaltations, forced states of mind 
associated with auto-suggestion, many phenomena, 
such as " stigmata," for instance, which have hitherto 
been over hastily relegated to the domain of pious 
legend, may possibly have a 44 scientific " background. 

" The Unconscious " 

But one has a repugnance to descending into this 
strange region. And religion, with its clear and lofty 
mood, can never have either taste for or relationship 
with considerations which so easily take an "occult" 
turn. Nor is its mysticism concerned with physiologies. 
But it is instructive and noteworthy that the old ideal- 
istic faith, 44 It is the mind that builds up the body for 
itself," is becoming stronger again in all kinds of philo- 
sophies and physiologies of 44 the unconscious/' as a 
reaction from the onesidedness of the mechanistic 
theories, and that it draws its chief support from the 
dependence of nervous and other bodily processes upon 
the psychical, which is being continually brought into 
greater and greater prominence. The moderate and 
luminous views of the younger Fichte, who probably 
also first introduced the now current term 44 the un- 
conscious," must be at least briefly mentioned. Accord- 
ing to him, the impulse towards the development of 
form which is inherent in everything living, and which 



IS THERE AGEING OF THE MIND 353 

builds up the organism from the germ to the complete 
whole, by forcing the chemical and physical processes 
into particular paths, is identical with the psychical 
itself. In instincts, the unconscious purposive actions 
of the lower animals in particular, he sees only a special 
mode of this at first unconscious psychical nature, which, 
building up organ after organ, makes use in doing so of 
all the physical laws and energies, and is at first wholly 
immersed in purely physiological processes. It is only 
after the body has been developed, and presents a rela- 
tively independent system capable of performing the 
necessary functions of daily life, that it rises beyond 
itself and gradually unfolds to conscious psychical life 
in increasing self-realisation. Edward von Hartmann 
has attempted to apply this principle of the unconscious 
as a principle of all cosmic existence. And wherever, 
among the younger generation of biologists, one has 

broken awav from the fascinations of the mechanistic 

j 

theory, he has usually turned to " psychical 11 co-operat- 
ing factors. 

Is there Ageing of the Mind ? 

Naturalism is also only apparently right in asserting 
that the mind ages with the body. To learn the answer 
which all idealism gives to this comfortless theory, it is 
well to read Schleiermacher's " Monologues,' 1 and espe- 
cially the chapter " Youth and Age. 11 The arguments 
put forward by naturalism, the blunting of the senses, 
the failing of the memory, are well known. But here 

z 



354 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



again there are luminous facts on the other side which 
are much more true. It is no wonder that a mind ages 
if it has never taken life seriously, never consolidated 
itself to individual and definite being through education 
and self-culture, through a deepening of morality, and 
has gained for itself no content of lasting worth. How 
could he do otherwise than become poor, dull and life- 
less, as the excitability of his organ diminishes and its 
susceptibility to external impressions disappears ? But 
did Goethe become old ? Did not Schleiermacher, 
frail and ailing as he was by nature, prove the truth of 
what he wrote in his youth, that there is no ageing of 
the mind ? 

The whole problem, in its highest aspects, is a 
question of will and faith. If I know mind and the 
nature of mind, and believe in it, I believe with 
Schleiermacher in eternal youth. If I do not believe 
in it, then I have given away the best of all means for 
warding off old age. For the mind can only hold itself 
erect while trusting in itself. And this is the best 
argument in the whole business. 

But even against the concrete special facts and the 
observable processes of diminution of psychical powers, 
and of the disappearance of the whole mental content, 
we could range other concrete and observable facts, 
which present the whole problem in quite a different 
light from that in which naturalism attempts to show 
it. They indicate that the matter is rather one of the 
rusting of the instrument to which the mind is bound 



IS THERE AGEING OF THE MIND 355 



than an actual decay of the mind itself, and that it 
is a withdrawing of the mind within itself, com- 
parable rather to sleep than to decay. The remarkable 
power of calling up forgotten memories in hypnosis, 
the suddenly re-awakening memory a few minutes before 
death, in which sometimes the whole past life is unrolled 
with surprising clearness and detail, the flaming up 
anew of a rusty mind in moments of great excitement, 
the great clearing up of the mind before its depar- 
ture, and many other facts of the same nature, are 
rather to be regarded as signs that in reality the mind 
never loses anything of what it has once experienced or 
possessed. It has only become buried under the surface. 
It has been withdrawn from the stage, but is stored up 
in safe treasure-chambers. And the whole stage may 
suddenly become filled with it again. 

The simile of an instrument and the master who 
plays upon it, which is often used of the relation 
between body and mind, is in many respects a very 
imperfect one ; for the master does not develop with 
and in his instrument. But in regard to the most 
oppressive arguments of naturalism, the influence of 
disease, of old age, of mental disturbances due to brain 
changes, the comparison serves our turn well enough, 
for undoubtedly the master is dependent upon his 
instrument ; upon an organ which is going more and more 
out of tune, rusting, losing its pipes, his harmonies will 
become poorer, more imperfect. And if we think of 
the association between the two as further obstructed, 



356 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

the master becoming deaf, the stops confused, the 
relation between the notes and pipes altered, then what 
may still live within him in perfect and unclouded 
purity, and in undiminished richness, may present itself 
outwardly as confused and unintelligible, may even find 
only disconnected expression, and finally cease alto- 
gether ; so that no conclusion would be possible except 
that the master himself had become different or poorer. 
The melancholy field of mental diseases perhaps yields 
proofs against naturalism to an even greater degree than 
for it. It is by no means the case that all mental 
diseases are invariably diseases of the brain, for even 
more frequently they are real sicknesses of the mind, 
which yield not to physical but to psychical remedies. 
And the fact that the mind can be ill, is a sad but 
emphatic proof that it goes its own way. 

Immortality 

It is in a faith in a Beyond, and in the immor- 
tality of our true being, that what lies finely distributed 
through all religion sums itself up and comes to full 
blossoming : the certainty that world and existence are 
insufficient, and the strong desire to break through into 
the true being, of which at the best we have here only 
a foretaste and intuition. The doctrine of immortality 
stands by itself as a matter of great solemnity and 
deep rapture. If it is to be talked about, both 
speaker and hearers ought to be in an exalted mood. 
It is the conviction which, of all religious convictions, 



IMMORTALITY 



357 



can be least striven for consciously ; it must well forth 
from devotional personal experience of the spirit and 
its dignity, and thus can maintain itself without, 
and indeed against much reasoning. To educate and 
cultivate it in us requires a discipline of meditation, 
of concentration, and of spiritual self-culture from within 
outwards. If we understood better what it meant to 
" live in the spirit, 11 to develop the receptivity, fineness, 
and depth of our inner life, to listen to and cultivate what 
belongs to the spirit, to inform it with the worth and 
content of religion and morality, and to integrate it in 
the unity and completeness of a true personality, we 
should attain to the certainty that personal spirit is the 
fundamental value and meaning of all the confused play 
of evolution, and is to be estimated on quite a different 
scale from all other being which is driven hither and 
thither in the stream of Becoming and Passing away, 
having no meaning or value because of which it 
must endure. And it would be well also if we under- 
stood better how to listen with keener senses to our 
intuitions, to the direct self-consciousness of the spirit in 
regard to itself, which sleeps in every mind, but which 
few remark and fewer still interpret. Here, where the 
gaze of self-examination reaches its horizon, and can 
only guess at what lies beyond, but can no longer inter- 
pret it, lie the true motives and reasons for our convic- 
tion of immortality. An apologetic cannot do more than 
clear away obstacles, nor need it do much more than 
has hitherto been done. It reminds us, as we have 



358 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

already seen, that the world which we know and study, 
and which includes ourselves, does not show its true 
nature to us ; hidden depths lie behind appearances. 
And it gathers together and sums up all the great 
reasons for the independence and underivability of the 
spiritual as contrasted with the corporeal. The spiritual 
has revealed itself to us as a reality in itself, which can- 
not be explained in terms of the corporeal, and which 
has dominion over it. Its beginning and its end are 
wholly unfathomable. There is no practical meaning 
in discussing its " origin " or its " passing away," as we 
do with regard to the corporeal. Under certain 
corporeal conditions it is there, it simply appears. But 
it does not arise out of them. And as it is not nothing, 
but an actual and effective reality, it can neither have 
come out of nothing nor disappear into nothing again. 
It appears out of the absolutely transcendental, 
associates itself with corporeal processes, determines 
these and is determined by them, and in its own time 
passes back from this world of appearance to the trans- 
cendental again. It is like a great unknown sea, that 
pours its waters into the configuration of the shore and 
withdraws them again. But neither the flowing in nor 
the ebbing again is of nothing or in nothing. Whether 
and how it retains the content, form, and structure 
that it assumes in other spheres of animate and con- 
scious nature, when it retires into the transcendental 
again ; or whether it dissolves and breaks up into the 
universal we do not know ; nor do we attribute everlast- 



IMMORTALITY 



359 



ingness to those individual forms of consciousness which 
we call animal souls. But of the self-conscious, personal 
spirit religion knows that it is everlasting. It knows 
this from its own sources. In its insight into the 
underivabilitv and autonomv of the spiritual it finds 
warrant and freedom to maintain this knowledge as 
-omething apart from or even in contrast to the general 
outlook on the world. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE WOULD AND GOD 

The world and nature are marvellous in their being, 
but they are not " divine " ! The formula " nafoira sive 
dens " is a monstrous misuse of the word " deus? if we 
are to use the words in the sense which history has 
given to them. God is the Absolute Being, perfect, 
wholly independent, resting in Himself, and necessary ; 
nature is entirely contingent and dependent, and at 
every point of it we are impelled to ask " Why ? w God 
is the immeasurable fulness of Being, nature is 
indeed diverse in the manifoldness of her productions, 
but she is nevertheless limited, and her possibilities are 
restricted within narrow limits. God is the unrestrained, 
and everlasting omnipotence itself, and the perfect 
wisdom ; nature is indeed mighty enough in the attain- 
ment of her ends, but how often is she obstructed, how 
often does she fail to reach them, and how seldom does 
she do so perfectly and without mistakes ? She shows 
wisdom, indeed, cunning in her products, subtlety and 
daintiness, taste and beauty, all these often in an over- 
whelming degree, yet just as often she brings forth what 



THE WORLD AND GOD 



361 



is meaningless, contradictory and mutually hurtful, 
traverses her own lines, and bewilders us by the 
brutality, the thoughtlessness, and purposelessness, the 
crookedness, incompleteness, and distortedness of her 
operations. And what is true of the world of external 
nature is true in a far greater degree of the world of 
history. Nature is not a god, but a demigod, says 
Aristotle. And on this, Pantheism with its creed, 
"?iatura sive deus" makes shipwreck. The words of 
this credo are either a mere tautology, and " deus " is 
misused as a new name for nature ; or they are false. 
It is not possible to transfer to nature and the world 
all the great ideas and feelings which the religious mind 
cherishes under the name of " God." 

On the other hand, nature is really, as Aristotle said, 
dai/uovla, that is, strange, mysterious, and marvellous, 
indicating God, and pointing, all naturalism and super- 
ficial consideration notwithstanding, as we have seen, to 
something outside of and beyond itself. Religion 
demands no more than this. It does not insist upon 
finding a solution for all the riddles of theoretical 
world-lore. It is not distressed because the course of 
nature often seems to our eyes confused, and to our 
judgment contradictory and unintelligible at a hun- 
dred places and in a hundred respects. On the contrary, 
that this is the case is to religion in another aspect a 
strong stimulus and corroboration. " The world is an 
odd fellow ; may God soon make an end of it," said 
Luther, and thus gave a crude but truly religious 



362 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



parallel to the words of Aristotle, 17 yop Qvo-ig 
Sai/movla 'a\X ov Oela, (Aristot. " De Divin. in Somn.,' n 
c. ii.). It is part of the very essence of religion, 
as we have seen, to read in the pages of nature, 
insufficiency, illusion, and perplexities, and to be 
made thereby impatient and desirous of penetrating 
to the true nature of things. Religion does not 
claim to be directly deducible out of a consideration of 
nature ; it demands only the right and freedom to inter- 
pret the world in its own way. And for this it is suffi- 
cient that this world affords those hints and suggestions 
for its convictions that we have seen it does afford. To 
form clear ideas in regard to the actual relations of the 
infinite to the finite, and of God to the world, and of 
what religion calls creation, preservation, and eternal 
providence, self-revelation in the world and in history, 
is hardly the task of religion at all, but rather pertains 
to our general speculative instinct, which can only 
satisfy itself with the help of imagination. Attempts 
of this kind have often been made. They are by no 
means valueless, for even if no real knowledge can be 
gained by this method, we may perhaps get an analogue 
of it which will help us to understand existence and 
phenomena, and to define our position, as well as to give 
at least provisional answers to many pressing questions 
(such, for instance, as the problem of theodicy). 

If we study the world unprejudiced by the naturalistic 
interpretation, or having shaken ourselves free from it, 
we are most powerfully impressed by one fundamental 



THE WORLD AND GOD 



363 



phenomenon in all existence : it is the fact of evolution. 
It challenges attention and interpretation, and analogies 
quickly reveal themselves which give something of the 
same trend to all such interpretations. From stage to 
stage existence advances onwards, from the world of large 
masses subject only to the laws of mechanics, to the 
delicately complex play of the forces of development in 
growth and other vital processes. The nature of the 
forces is revealed in ever higher expression, and at the 
same time in ever more closely connected series of 
stages. Even between the inorganic and the organic 
there is an intermediate stage — crystal formation — 
which is no longer entirely of the one, yet not of the 
other. And in the organic world evolution reveals 
itself most clearly of all ; from the crudest and simplest 
it presses onwards to the most delicate and complex. 
In the corporeal as in the psychical, in the whole as in 
each of its parts, there are ever higher stages, sometimes 
far apart, sometimes close together. However we 
picture to ourselves the way in which evolution accom- 
plishes itself in time, we can scarcely describe it without 
using such expressions as " nature advances upwards 
step by step," " it presses and strives upwards and 
unfolds itself stage by stage." 

And it is with us as it was with Plato ; we inform the 
world with a soul, with a desire and endeavour which 
continually expresses itself in higher and higher forms. 
And it is with us also as with Fichte ; we speak of the 
will which, unconscious of itself, pours itself forth in 



364 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

unconscious and lifeless nature, and then on this foun- 
dation strives forward, expressing its activity in ever 
higher developments, breaking forth in life, sensation, 
and desire, and finally coming to itself in conscious 
existence and will. The whole world seems to us a 
being which wills to become, presses restlessly forward, 
and passes from the potential to the actual, realising 
itself. And the height of its self-realisation is conscious, 
willing life. 

This outlook is lofty and significant, it supplies a 
guiding clue by which the facts of life and nature can 
be arranged. The religious outlook, too, when it 
wishes to indulge in speculation, can make use of this 
guiding thread. It will then say : God established 
the world as " a will to existence, to consciousness, to 
spirit, 11 He established it, not as complete, but as 
becoming. He does not build it as a house, but plants 
it, like a flower, in the seed, that it may grow, that it 
may struggle upwards stage by stage to fuller existence, 
aspiring with toil and endeavour towards the height 
where, in the image of the Creator, as a free and 
reasonable spirit capable of personality, it may realise 
the aim of its being. Thus the world is of God, that 
is, its rudiments came from God, and it is to God, in 
the purpose of likeness to God. And it is imbued 
with the breath of Godhead which moves in it and 
impels it onwards, with the logos of the everlasting 
Zeus of whom Cleanthes sings, with the spirit of 
Jehovah whom Isaiah and the Psalmist praise, and 



THE WORLD AND GOD 



365 



whom the poet of the Creation figuratively paints ; the 
divine breath is in everything that lives, from grass to 
flower, from animal to man. But it is implanted as 
becoming. And in regard to this, religion can say of 
the whole world what it says of man. For man, too, 
is not given as a finished product, either as regards the 
genus or the individual, but as a rudiment, with his 
destiny to work out, in historical becoming, by realising 
what is inherent in him. We call this freedom. And 
an adumbration of such freedom, which is the aim of 
self-realisation, would help us to penetrate deeply into 
the nature of things. Many riddles and apparent 
contradictions could be fitted in with this view of 
things : the unity of the world, and yet the gradations ; 
the relationship of all living creatures, the unity of all 
psychical life, and yet the uniqueness of the rational 
spirit ; causal concatenation, yet guidance by means of 
the highest ideas and purposes ; the tentativeness. 
illogicalness, and ineffectiveness of nature, unconsciously 
pressing forward along uncertain paths, yet the direct- 
ness and purposefulness of the main lines of evolution 
in general. This God-awakened will to be lies at the 
roots of the mysteries of development in all living 
creatures, of the unconscious purposiveness of instinctive 
action, of the gradually ascending development of 
psychical life and its organ. Operating in crystals and 
plants purely as a formative impulse and " entelechy," 
it awakes in the bodies of animals more and more as 
" soul." Then it awakes fully in man, and in him, in 



366 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



an entirely new phase of real free development, it 
builds itself up to spirit. It resembles a stream whose 
waves flow casually and transiently in animal conscious- 
ness, and are soon withdrawn again, to break forth 
anew at another place, in the personal spirit, where 
they attain to permanent indissoluble form, since they 
have now at last attained to self-realisation, and fulfilled 
the purpose of all cosmic existence, the reflecting of the 
eternal personality in the creature. But it is only in 
human history that what was prepared for in natural 
evolution is completed. 

The riddle of theodicy thus becomes easier, for what 
surrounds us in nature and history has not come direct 
from the hand of eternal wisdom, but is in the first 
place the product of the developing, striving world, 
which only gradually and after many mistakes and 
failures works out what is inherent in it as eternal idea 
and aim. We see and blame its mistakes, for instance 
in our own human structure. We see the deficiencies in 
the historical course of things. But when we find fault 
we do not see that evolution and self-realisation and 
freedom are more worthy of praise than ready-made 
existence incapable of independent action. 

This principle of development, wherever it is regarded 
as " world-soul 11 or as 44 will" or as the 44 unconscious,'' 
is frequently, through pantheism and the doctrine of 
immanence, made equivalent with the object of religion, 
with God. This is an impossible undertaking. We 
cannot worship what only reaches its full development 



THE WORLD AND GOD 



367 



in ourselves. But that we can worship, and that it is 
only in the feeling of complete dependence that the full 
depth of what is developing within us to conscious life 
reveals itself, proves better than anything else that God 
is above all " World-will." It was more than allegory 
when Plato in Timaeus* set the " eternal father and 
creator of the world ir above all soul and psyche. And 
it was religion that broke through when Fichte in his 
little book, " Anweisung zum seeligen Leben," set being 
before becoming, and God above the creatures struggling 
towards self-realisation. Religion knows in advance 
that this is so. And calm reflection confirms it. All 
that we have already learnt of the dependence, con- 
ditionedness, and contingent nature of the world is 
equally true of a world 44 evolving itself" out of its 
potentiality, of a will to existence, and of an unconscious 
realising itself. No flower can grow and develop 
without being first implicit in the seed. Nothing can 
attain to 44 actuality," to realisation, that was not 
potentially implied in the beginning. But who origin- 
ated the seed of the world-flower? Who enclosed 
within it the 44 tendencies," the 44 rudiments " which 
realise themselves in evolution ? Invariably 44 the actual 
is before the potential " and Being before Becoming. 
A world could only become if it were called to become 
by an everlasting Being. God planting the world- 
flower that it might radiate forth in its blossoms His 
own image and likeness, is an allegory which may well 
symbolise for religion the relation between God and the 



368 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



world. And thus it is possible to draw the outline of 
a religious outlook on the world, into which the results 
of world -lore could well be fitted. This frame was 
constructed by Plato on the basis of a religious study 
of things, and after Plato it was first definitely outlined 
in Fichte's too much forgotten but unforgettable books 
" Bestimmung des Menschen " and bS Anweisung zum 
seeligen Leben," and it is thus a new creation of the 
great German idealism and its mighty faith. And it is 
not easy to see why it should be abandoned, why we 
should give it up in favour of an irreligious, semi- 
naturalistic outlook on the world. 

One thing, however, must be kept constantly in mind : 
even such an interpretation of the world as this is 
poetry, not knowledge. There is a poetry of the will 
to live, of the unconscious, which is struggling towards 
existence, but there is no philosophy. There are only 
analogies and hints of what goes on at the founda- 
tions of the world. In particular, the unconscious 
creative impulse in all living organisms, this " will " 
towards form, its relationship with instinct and the 
relationship of instinct to conscious psyche, afford us 
a step-ladder of illustrations, and an illustration of 
the step-ladder of the " will towards existence," which 
invite us to overstep the bounds of our knowledge, and 
indulge in our imagination. We can say nothing of 
pre-conscious consciousness and will, we can at best 
only make guesses about them. We cannot think 
definitely of a general world-will, which wills and 



THE WORLD AND GOD 369 

aspires in individual beings ; we cannot picture to 
ourselves the emergence of the individual " souls " of 
animals and man from a universal psyche. Imagination 
plays a larger part here than clear thinking. And for 
our present purpose it must be clearly borne in mind that 
religion does not require any speculative construction of 
theories of the world. But "you shall know that it is 
your imagination which creates the world for you.' 1 * And 
if a speculative construction be desired, it will always 
be most easily attained along these lines, and will in 
this way come nearest to our modern knowledge of 
nature. We must remember, too, that the objections 
which may be urged against this form of speculation 
are equally applicable against any other. For the 
origin of the individual psyche, the graduated series of 
its forms, the development of one after the other, and 
of that of the child from that of its parents, are riddles 
which cannot be solved by any speculative thinking. 
Monad ology, theories of the pre-existence of the soul, 
creationism, or the current traducianism — which to-day, 
with its partly or wholly materialistic basis, is just as 
naive as the older — all reveal equal darkness. But the 
speculation we have hinted at, if it gives no explanation, 
at least supplies a framework for many questions which 
attract us, and do so even from the point of view of 
religion : for instance the collective, diffuse, and almost 
divisible nature of consciousness in the lower stages, its 
increasing and ever more strict centralisation, the natural 

* Schleiermacher, " Keden uber die Eeligion," ii. 

2 A 



370 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 



relationship of the psychical in man to the psychical in 
general, and yet its incommensurability and superiority 
to all the world. 

But let us once more turn from all the poetical and 
imaginative illustrations of the relation of God to the 
world, which can at best be only provisional, and only 
applicable at certain points, to the more general aspect 
of the problem. Religion itself consists in this : 
believing and experiencing that in time the Eternal, in 
the finite the Infinite, in the world God is working, 
revealing Himself, and that in Him lies the reason and 
cause of all being. For this it has names like creation, 
providence, self-revelation of God in the world, and it 
lives by the mysteries which are indicated under these 
names. The mysteries themselves it recognises in vague 
or naive forms of conception long before it attempts 
any definite formulation. If dogmatics begin with the 
latter, some form or other of the stiff and wooden 
doctrines of concursus, of infiuxus ordinarius and extra- 
ordinarius usually develops with many other subtleties, 
which are nothing more than attempts to formulate the 
divine influence in finite terms, and to think of it as a 
force along with other forces. Two series of causes are 
usually distinguished ; the system of causes and effects 
within the world, according to which everything 
natural takes place, the " causae secundaria? " ; and in 
addition to these the divine causality co-operating and 
influencing the others, ordering them with gentle and 
delicate pressure, and guiding them towards their true 



THE WOHLD AND GOD 



■371 



end, and which may also reveal itself as u extraordinaria n 
in miracles and signs. This double operation is regarded 
as giving rise to all phenomena, and in it consists 
guidance, dispensation, providence, and natural revela- 
tion. 

This kind of conception is extremely primitive, and is 
unfavourable to religion itself, for in it mystery is done 
away with and arranged according to rubric, and every- 
thing has become quite " simple." Moreover, this doc- 
trine has a necessary tendencv to turn into the dreaded 
k> Deism." According to the deistic view, God made the 
world in the beginning, and set the system of natural 
causes in motion, in such a wav that no farther assistance 
was given, and everything went on of itself. This theory 
is incredibly profane, and strikes God out of the world, 
and nature, and history at a single stroke, substituting 
for Him the course of a well-arranged system of clock- 
work. But the former theory is a verv unsatisfactory 
and doubtful makeshift as compared with that of deism, 
for it is impossible to see why, if God arranged these 
causa? secundaria?, He should have made them so weak 
and ineffective that they need all these ingenious con- 
cursus, injluxus, determbiationes, gubernationes, and 
the like. Both theories are crude fabrications of the 
dogmatists, and they have nothing left in them of the 
piety they were intended to protect, nor do they become 
any better in this respect, however many attempts are 
made to define them. Religion possesses, without the 
aid of any stilted and artificial theories, all the things 



372 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

we have named above, and especially and most directly 
the last of them, namely, the experience of the revelation 
and communication of the Divine in the great develop- 
ments and movements of spiritual and religious history. 
And it finds its corroboration and justification and 
freedom not by way of dogmatics but of criticism. It is 
impossible to distinguish artificially two sets of causes, 
and to give to the world what is alleged to be of the 
world, and to God what is alleged to be of God. But it 
is permissible to point to the insufficiency of our causal 
study in general, and to the limits of our knowledge. 
Even when we have established it as a fact that all 
phenomena are linked together in a chain of causes we 
are still far from having discovered how things actually 
come to pass. Every qualitative effect and change is 
entirely hidden from us as far as the cause of its coming 
about and its real and inner nature are concerned. 
Every effect which in kind or quantity goes beyond its 
cause (and we cannot make anything of the domain of 
living forms, of the psychical and of history without 
these), shows us that we are still only at the surface. 
Indeed, even mechanical action, often alleged to be 
entirely intelligible, such as the transference or trans- 
formation of energy, is, as we have seen, a complete 
riddle. In addition, all causality runs its course in time, 
and therefore partakes of all the defects and limitations 
of our views of time. And finally we are guided by the 
Kantian antinomy regarding the conditions of what is 



THE WORLD AND GOD 373 



4 given.' It destroys the charm of the " purely causal " 
point of view by showing that this in itself cannot be 
made complete and is therefore contradictory. More- 
over, in the phenomena of life, and in the fact that con- 
sciousness and will control our corporeal processes, and 
yet can hardly be thought of as a cause " co-operating" 
with other causes, we found an analogy, if a weak and 
obscure one, of the relation that a divine teleology and 
governing of the world may bear to mundane phenomena. 
Thus mystery remains in all its strength and is not re- 
placed by the surrogate of a too simple and shallow 
dogmatic theory. In confessing mystery and resting 
content with it we are justified by reflection on the 
nature and antinomy of our knowledge. 

All this is true also of what religion means by creation. 
In the feeling of complete humility, in its experience of 
absolute dependence and conditionedness, the creature 
becomes conscious of itself as a creature, and experiences 
with full clearness what it means to be a " creature " 
and " created." The dogmatic theory is here again only 
a surrogate of mystery. And again critical self-reflection 
proves a better guide than any theory of creation, 
which is quite in its place as a means of expression 
in religious discourse and poetry, but is quite insuffi- 
cient as true knowledge. That we must but cannot 
think of this world either as beginning or as not- 
beginning is the analogue in knowledge of what religion 
experiences in mystery ; and that this contingent and 



374 NATURALISM AND RELIGION 

conditioned world is founded in everlasting, necessary, 
true Being, is the analogue of what religion possesses 
and knows through devout feeling, more directly and 
clearly than by any thinking, of the relations of God to 
the world. 



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